


The Flight of the Tombaugh

by tsukinobara



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, Outer Space, Star Wars has a lot to answer for, and random cameos, with bonus smuggling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 01:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19879357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobara/pseuds/tsukinobara
Summary: Jensen and Jared are smugglers, traveling the back lanes of settled space in Jensen's ship the Tombaugh. Then one of their friends comes to them with a job – help a fellow criminal get a girl off a frozen moon and return her to her stepfather. It seems like a simple thing for a lot of money, but it turns out the girl has a secret and she's convinced her stepdad wants her dead because of it. Jared wants the girl to live. Jensen wants to keep his ship. Their decision to do both will lead them to space stations, far-flung settlements, and the edge of galactic nowhere, and pit them against cops, cultists, other criminals, and ultimately their own desperate decisions.





	The Flight of the Tombaugh

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for ridiculous cameos, half-assed understanding of space travel and spaceship speed, and traces of Chad. And obviously none of this ever happened because, you know, space.
> 
> cassiopeia7 made the fabulous art - see it [here](https://cassiopeia7.livejournal.com/623835.html) or [here](https://cassiopeia7.dreamwidth.org/572466.html).

The _Tombaugh_ , an innocent-looking but heavily-modified smuggler’s spaceship, floated serenely through space. Her pilot sat in the cockpit, gazing out at stars and planets and distant moons. His name was Jensen and he’d been trained to fly freighters for a mining conglomerate, but as soon as he could free himself of that job he’d taken to the sky for himself and not looked back. He’d fallen into smuggling the way he imagined a lot of people did - he needed money and didn’t much care how he made it. His crew was just himself and his co-pilot Jared (who’d been born in space and had an affinity for the ships that made their way through it), and even though it was just the two of them, the _Tombaugh_ was a fast ship, Jensen was a skilled pilot, and while they’d been chased plenty, they were infrequently caught.

Which was all well and good, Jensen thought now, but it would help if their reputation found them a job. They were in hock to his old friend Chris who'd gotten them out of trouble several months ago, because while they weren't caught often, that didn't mean they weren't caught at all. Chris had paid their bail, freed the _Tombaugh_ from impound, and most importantly - and expensively - cleared their records in that sector. He'd given them two choices to pay him back: either work for him, and he'd keep their ship as guarantee, or treat his help as a loan, with the ship as collateral. Jensen hadn't wanted to work for anyone ever again, even someone he knew and generally liked, especially if he couldn't even fly his own ship, so he and Jared had taken the second option. But even if they didn't have this debt to clear, man could only lay low among the back lanes of settled space for so long before he needed to restock and refuel and -

“Fuck!” Jared said over the internal comms. Jensen heard a crash.

“You okay?” he called.

No answer.

“Jared?”

“Fucking screws,” Jared called back.

“What are you doing? Don’t break my ship.”

“I’m not gonna break your ship.” He sounded annoyed.

Jensen and Jared were equal partners in all their shady business endeavors, and one of the reasons they started working together at all was because Jared was an excellent and inventive mechanic, but the _Tombaugh_ was Jensen's, and if anyone was going to break anything, it should be him.

There was another, smaller, crash, followed by a clatter, followed by indistinct noise that sounded like Jared talking to himself, or to the ship. Jensen swiveled around in his chair and decided he should go check on things.

“Fuck,” Jared said again, before Jensen could get up.

“What?”

“Water recycler's busted.”

“Fuck.” Jensen thought for a minute. “How long do we have?”

“If we're careful? Four days.”

“Fuck.”

Jared loped into the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot's seat. “We can make it to Port Wombat if we push it.”

Jensen considered. He looked sideways at Jared. “You just want to see Genevieve, don't you.”

“I want to fix the water recycler.” But he was grinning. Genevieve owned a bar, the Glass Lamp, where the drinks were cheap, the food simple, and the crowd familiar. They'd picked up several jobs there, and if anyplace on the ground could feel like home, it did.

Jared's expression changed suddenly. “We got the credits for a new recycler?”

“Depends where we look. We'll need fuel too.” Jensen considered his co-pilot. “Brush up on your bargaining.” Jensen hated dealing for parts and supplies. He'd just as soon pay the asking price and be done with it, except a lot of the asking prices in Port Wombat were yanked up for the desperate and ignorant, and he hated knowing he was being taken advantage of more than he hated to dicker. Jared, on the other hand, liked to bargain, and he liked talking to strangers. He could get what they needed for a good price, and Jensen could ping some of their contacts in search of work.

Three days later Port Wombat appeared on the _Tombaugh_ 's screens. Jensen and Jared had been sparing with their water, using it only to drink and not for things like washing dishes or themselves – they hadn't even cooked with it – and Jensen was already starting to feel gritty and grimy. It was purely psychological, he knew, but the fact was that he couldn't wait to find a cheap room with its own shower so he could wash.

After that, parts for the water recycler and fresh fuel cells, and after that, hopefully, if all the stars aligned, a job.

The external comms crackled. “Approaching ship, please acknowledge.”

Jensen jerked himself out of his daydream. “This is the _Tombaugh_ ,” he said, “Colony Cluster registration NL12-967M4, requesting a land berth. No cargo.”

“Registration acknowledged. Please dock in Yard G.”

“I told Genevieve we were coming,” Jared said, appearing in the cockpit as the ship started to descend. Jensen glanced over and noted that he’d changed out of his grimy coveralls and into more presentable pants and shirt. He'd even combed his hair. Jensen glanced back at the windshield. He could find Yard G with his eyes closed but he liked to watch their approach.

You could park your ship above the stratosphere over Port Wombat and have one of the landing field shuttles pick you up and ferry you to the surface – big ships did it all the time – but why do that, when you could drop through the atmosphere, feeling your ship adjusting to each successive layer, watching the change in cloud cover and the way the buildings of the port got closer and closer until you finally touched down? It was exhilarating and he wouldn't pass it up for anything.

He found an empty berth and set the _Tombaugh_ down on new-looking asphalt. He hadn't even finished the shut-down procedures before Jared had unbuckled himself and jumped out of his seat. Jensen heard the starboard hatch open, followed by faint whoops of joy, followed by the sound of Jared clattering back up through the hatch and into the cockpit.

“Fresh air!” he cried. “It smells so....” He gestured vaguely, as if trying to find the right word.

“Don't say 'clean'.” Almost nothing about the air in Port Wombat was legitimately clean.

“So fresh! You're rolling your eyes at me. I don't care. We're gonna eat fresh food and drink cold drinks and take long showers and shoot the shit with people in person. And I'm gonna fix the water recycler for cheap.” He swatted Jensen on the arm to get him to move. “Come on, the day's a-wasting.”

They grabbed their overnight bags and went out through the starboard hatch, Jared trotting between ships towards town while Jensen made sure the _Tombaugh_ was locked up tight. Just three days ago they were staring down dehydration, and now they were staring down the exciting prospect of food and drink and bathing facilities. They could have asked the control tower to send a tram to collect them at the landing field, but after having been cooped up in the ship, they both wanted to stretch their legs.

Jensen took stock as he ambled towards town, looking for ships he knew. There was the _Lovelace_ and her sister ship the _Lovecraft_ – both of them owned by some friend of Jared's and both of them looking like they'd lost a game of bumper boats – and the humped shape of the _Canned Ham_ , instantly recognizable by her pink paint job and silver trim as much as by her smooth lines and compact shape. She belonged to a bounty hunter named Danneel whose career had actually started in official law enforcement in the Colony Cluster, long before she met Jensen and Jared.

Jensen was half convinced she and Genevieve were an item, and half convinced Jared knew it too, but what people did in the privacy of their own rooms was their own business, and anyone who lived on the fringe lived a precarious life, so why shouldn't they take their pleasures where they could?

And speaking of pleasures... there was a cheap hostel not far from the Glass Lamp with decent beds but more importantly hot water and lots of it. But food and drink first, and he should find Jared.

Jared was unsurprisingly ensconced at the bar, two glasses already in front of him, chatting with Genevieve while she wiped the counter. She was wearing a high-necked green shirt with baby blue trim, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, brown hair tied in knots all over her head. She looked fresh and pretty, clearly having made herself look nice for Jared just as he'd tried to make himself presentable for her.

Jensen plopped down onto a stool. Jared slid one of the glasses over without looking at him, and Jensen took a grateful sip. He wasn’t sure what was in it, only that it was cold and wet and a little spicy, and it perked him right up.

“Jared tells me you need a new water recycler,” Genevieve said.

“And a shower,” Jared added, grinning.

“And a shower,” Jensen repeated. “A long hot one. And fuel.”

“So we'll be here a couple days. You'll get tired of seeing us.”

“Never,” Genevieve said. She flicked her rag at Jared. “You should know Aldis is gone.”

Aldis was one of Jared and Jensen's favorite people for cheap parts of uncertain provenance. Everything in his shop had probably fallen out the back of a freighter, but he could acquire what he didn't have on hand, he was a friendly guy, and he was about as honest as it was possible for a black marketeer to be.

“Gone as in 'left the port'?” Jensen asked. “Or as in 'left the surface'?”

“He's not dead, is he?” Jared added.

“Gone as in 'vanished overnight but left his stock behind',” Danneel said, appearing out of nowhere and leaning over Jensen's shoulder. “Word is someone recognized some part he sold them - it came from a ship they'd reported stolen - the law found parts of three missing ships in a bunch of storage sheds they tracked back to him. Little personal cruisers, all previously reported stolen. Next day he was gone.” She reached between Jensen and Jared to snag Jensen's drink and finish it.

“Hey!” he protested.

She put the now-empty glass back on the counter, wrapped her arms around Jensen's neck, and kissed him on the temple, before releasing him to do the same to Jared. Violently pink hair swung into Jensen's face as Danneel turned her head. He didn't know the true story of why she'd left law enforcement in the Cluster to hunt bounties across settled space, but sometimes he wondered if it had anything to do with her dislike of the uniform and its attendant regulation hair.

“It's nice to see you,” she said. She rested an arm on each of their shoulders. “Your timing's good – I'm chasing a bounty and just stopped to refuel. You passing through? Looking for a job? Can I get one of those?” she asked Genevieve, nodding to the glasses on the bar. Genevieve turned to mix her drink.

“We need a new water recycler,” Jared said. “Did law enforcement impound Aldis's stock?”

“Actually, they did,” Genevieve said. She put a glass on the counter. Danneel reached between Jensen and Jared, picked it up, and took a swig. “They're learning to move quick without broadcasting all their plans first.”

“That sucks. He had decent stuff. I liked him.”

“You boys want something to eat?”

Jensen suddenly realized how hungry he was. “Please,” he said. They'd have to restock the galley, too, once the _Tombaugh_ was fixed and ready to go. “Surprise us.” She went into the kitchen and Jensen turned to Danneel. “You said you're chasing a bounty? Where is it?”

“The Cluster. I figured I'd get a drink while the _Ham_ was powering up.” She shook her head, drank some more. “Fuel's so fucking expensive here.”

“Fuel's fucking expensive everywhere.”

Jared pulled his handheld out of a pocket. “I just want to check the news,” he explained, when Jensen tried to see what he was looking at. “See what people are up to. Hey, this is interesting. You remember Adrianne Palicki? She's trying to get to the Cluster. She says she's been stuck in Port Wombat for a couple weeks.”

“Why?”

“Looks like her ship was impounded and she can't get the credits to get it back. And, uh, there might be a warrant out for her arrest.”

“What, here?” Why would she even come to Port Wombat if she was wanted here? “For what?”

“I can't tell.” Jared scrolled through the feed, no doubt trying to get more details on the warrant. He looked over at Danneel. “You're going to the Cluster. You could take her.”

“Oh hell no,” she said, with some heat.

“Why not? The _Ham_ 's big enough, and you'd do it for us.”

“I like you. She's a rancid bitch and I don't want her on my ship. Don't look at me like that – you think just because you're nice to people and people are nice to you – of course they are, I mean look at you, you're adorable – you think everyone's a decent human being. They're not. She stole contracts from me. I lost bounties because of her. She wants off this rock so badly, you take her.”

“We're not going to the Cluster,” Jensen said mildly. He bore no great love for Adrianne – she was sneaky, even by the standards of bounty hunters and smugglers and other generally shady characters – but he didn't see the point in getting bitchy about it. “Right now we're not going anywhere.”

“I'm not letting that cunt on my ship. But now I know there's a warrant out for her I might just turn her in.”

“You can't do that!” Jared protested.

“Why not?”

“Because! If you cash in Adrianne's warrant, then anyone we know could do it to us. You don't want us to go to jail.”

Danneel raised an eyebrow at him. “First, you've already been to jail. Second, that's not how it works. Besides, I told you, people like you. Not everyone likes her.” She put her glass down and patted him and Jensen on the shoulders, then dug in her pockets for money. She slapped some credits on the counter. In most places, for most people, a credit was just a line of code instantly transmitted from one account to the next, but in places like Port Wombat, places frequented by smugglers and conmen and those whose business was semi-legal at best, cold hard cash was just as common. It was harder to track.

Bounty hunting was a legitimate, licensed career choice, but bounty hunters sometimes inhabited the same shadowy corners as their bounties, and conducted their personal business the same way.

“I'm out,” Danneel went on. “I'll drop you a line when I've finished this job, if you want to get up to something fun together.” She turned on her heel and walked out, bright pink ponytail swinging behind her.

Jensen and Jared looked at each other, no doubt both thinking the same thing – _What was that all about?_

“Where's our food?” Jared asked. So maybe they weren't thinking the same thing. “Genevieve!” he called, leaning over the bar to yell in the general direction of the kitchen. “We're hungry!”

“What's Adrianne's warrant worth?” Jensen asked.

“We're not turning her in.” Jared was still looking towards the kitchen. A couple of women in coveralls sitting a few stools down also leaned forward and called for the bartender.

“I'm curious. What's she worth?”

Jared gave Jensen his handheld. Jensen glanced over the warrant, which had indeed been issued from Port Wombat. Smuggling of a controlled substance, smuggling of regulated goods, falsification of documentation, resisting arrest -

“Sorry that took so long,” Genevieve said, appearing out of nowhere and putting two plates on the bar in front of him and Jared. Each plate held a pile of spicy shredded meat of uncertain provenance, a pile of slightly charred greens, and a couple slices of dark bread. “My cooktop heats unevenly. Do you mind giving it a look, when you get a chance?” That question was directed towards Jared, who for once seemed more interested in his food than her.

“Sure,” Jensen answered for him. They weren't bounty hunters but there was no reason they couldn't turn Adrianne in, assuming they could find her. “Wait for him to finish stuffing his face. I'll see if I can find us a job. What is this?” He gestured to the greens on his plate.

“Water kale. You didn't see the hydroponics shed on my roof? Call Sam Ferris.”

“Shit,” Jared and Jensen said at the same time. Sam was an old hand at finding semi- or not-at-all-legal work for people who needed to make a quick credit. They should have thought of her first.

“Okay,” Jensen said to Jared, “we'll call Sam. I'll go see her, you'll fix Genevieve's cooktop, we'll find a new water recycler, we'll be good.”

Jared nodded, the best agreement he could make with a mouthful of water kale. Jensen made a sandwich with his shredded meat and bit into it. It tasted like spices and sauce. He couldn't tell what kind of meat it was, which meant it was just as likely to be synthetic or soybean as it was to have come from an actual animal. He didn't care.

Genevieve went off to serve other customers. Jared and Jensen finished their food and drinks, and Jensen left to get a room at the hostel so he could finally wash. Jared could pay the tab.

It didn't take Jared long to source and bargain for a new water recycler, and installing it went quicker with both of them working on it. Paying for it practically cleared them out of credits. Hopefully Sam would have something and they wouldn't be broke for long.

Sam ran a caffeine bar in one of Port Wombat's covered markets, and Jensen was looking forward to cajoling a free cup of hot caffeine out of her while they talked shop, but it was not meant to be. He was within sight of her place when he heard someone call his name and felt them grab his arm. Jensen almost punched the person out of reflex but they put their arms up in defense.

“Don't hit me, man! My skies, you're jumpy.”

“Misha,” Jensen said, not sure if he was pleased or apprehensive. Misha was an old colleague with whom Jensen and Jared sometimes did business, and while he and his crew were more thieves and conmen than smugglers, sometimes they'd have a job that was worth a good number of credits. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you! Although some caffeine wouldn't go amiss.” He glanced sideways towards Sam's stall, then shook his head. “But later. You look well. I have a proposition for you.”

“Okay. Is it for a job?”

“You'll see. Chad has a plan.” Misha's eyes darted around. “Come back to the Glass Lamp. I'll buy you a drink.”

“Does it involve a job?” Jensen repeated.

“You know Chad.” Misha winked. “Always planning something.”

“I do know Chad. That's why I need details before I commit.” Chad was Misha's second. He was a fun guy but Jensen didn't fully trust him.

Misha glanced around again. They were surrounded by stalls and people. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, but you never knew what kind of security was hooked up around these places. What law enforcement there was on Port Wombat was interested in catching people who disturbed the peace, not low-level criminals making their low-level plans – unless those low-level criminals had warrants out – but stall owners could have set up their own security, or someone could be wandering around the market recording any chatter they came across. It was a paranoid way to live, to assume someone was always listening to you, but it was a good way to stay off the radar.

“Not here,” Misha said. “Genevieve's holding a booth for us.” He started to walk off, pulling Jensen with him. Jensen gave Sam's caffeine bar a longing look over his shoulder but followed Misha out of the market.

Jared was sitting at the bar working his way through a plate of steamed buns when they got to the Glass Lamp, but as soon as he saw Misha and Jensen he slid off his stool and followed them to a booth in a dark corner. 

Genevieve caught Jensen's eye as they went, lifted her hand to her mouth, and tilted it – _Do you want a drink?_ He shrugged and pointed to Misha. _I don't know. Only if he's buying._

“I got hungry,” Jared said, once they were seated. He pushed his plate towards Jensen. “Have a bun.”

“So tell us about this proposition,” Jensen said to Misha. “Where is Chad, anyway?”

“Talking to people. Setting things up. You know.”

“If it's not a big job, we don't have time for it.”

“It's not a job yet. But you can make a lot.”

“Are you going to give us any details?” Jared asked.

“Have you heard of Sahar Technologies?”

“It's a terraforming outfit, isn't it?”

Misha looked around the bar, leaned across the table, lowered his voice, and said “It used to be Green Worlds.”

Jensen and Jared looked at each other. Green Worlds was a now-defunct terraforming company, put out of business after a catastrophe on a reasonably-sized moon called Bernon on the edge of settled space. Terraforming in its early days was a trial-and-error kind of business, because sometimes it was hard to know how a planet or a moon would react to the process until things were underway. But by the time Green Worlds got the contract for Bernon, improvements in science and engineering meant that disasters were rare, and full-scale catastrophes almost unheard of.

The terraforming on Bernon held long enough for a good-sized settlement to plant itself, but the forced climate suffered a swift chain of breaks that not only destroyed the settlement and killed everyone in it, but left the moon too cold and too inhospitable for a permanent colony. And you couldn't terraform twice. Green Worlds was subsequently accused of a host of crimes. Payouts were made, high-level resignations were accepted, fines were levied, regulations were passed, contrition was expressed. The firm was allowed to dissolve its assets and go out of business. There was a research station on Bernon now, as the failure of the terraforming and the frozen nature of the moon apparently offered some great research opportunities, and it was rumored that the destroyed settlement had been taken over by a doomsday cult, but the place was mostly known as a cautionary tale, and no one went there because there was nothing to go there for.

Jensen was pretty sure the mining conglomerate he used to work for had done some business with Green Worlds back in the day, but he couldn't remember exactly what business, and in any case the conglomerate had nothing to do with Bernon.

Jared bit into a bun and said “Are you getting into terraforming now?” with his mouth full.

“The owner and CEO put up a reward for his daughter. She's missing.”

“So?”

“It's a private contract. It's a lot.”

A private contract meant there was no competition to find the missing person. The fact that the reward was a lot of money meant... nothing, yet.

“Why are you telling us?” Jensen asked. “We don't do missing persons. Neither do you.” He sat up in the booth and tried to get Genevieve's attention. Now that he could guess Misha was going to keep talking, Jensen was going to get a free coffee out of him before having to tell him no.

“True. But we consider it when a contractor gets ahold of us with a proposition. Did I mention it was good credits?” Misha dug around in his jacket pockets and retrieved a beat-up handheld. He poked and swiped at the screen for a minute before handing it across the table to Jensen. “That's the job listing. Look at the reward.”

Jensen tilted it so Jared could see as well. There was a picture with the listing, a headshot of a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, with blonde hair and a pale green jacket that even Jensen recognized as being out of style. It was clearly an old picture. Jared stuffed the rest of the bun in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. It _was_ a lot of money.

“Do you know where this missing woman is?” Jensen asked.

“Not quite.”

“'Not quite'?”

“Why did you tell us you had a plan?” Jared asked.

“Because I do,” Misha said. “And it's 'We're still finalizing some details but if you meet us in ten days we'll tell you everything'.” He popped a bun in his mouth and grinned around it.

“That's not a plan.”

Genevieve came over. “What can I get you boys?” she asked. She nodded at the remaining buns and said “I love you, but you have to pay for those,” to Jared. He pointed at Misha.

“Coffee,” Jensen said. “Add just enough milk to make it a shade lighter and spike it with something. Surprise me.”

“I'll take a beer,” Jared added.

“I'm good,” Misha said.

“That's not what I heard,” Genevieve said, winking at him before walking off to get the drinks.

“Let me get this straight,” Jensen said to Misha. “You're buying us drinks just to tell us the head of Sahar Tech put up a reward for his missing daughter? That's not worth anything to us.”

Jared took the handheld, wiped his hands on his shirt to clean off any bun crumbs, and scrolled around. “It _is_ a lot of money,” he reminded Jensen, and to Misha he said “You told us it was a private contract.”

Misha nodded. “And the person who got it asked us for help. It could be a big job.”

“It's finding one person. How big could that be?” He bit into another bun.

“This is dumb, Misha,” Jensen said. “You don't need us for this thing. Thanks for the coffee, but you wasted your time.”

“Meet me and Chad in ten days and you'll change your mind,” Misha said, sounding very sure of himself. “I promise.”

“We'll see.”

Genevieve brought the drinks and took Misha's credits. Once she was gone, Misha took a bun and said “Ten days. You remember that bar on La Spina?”

“The Unseen?” Jared said. “That place is a hole. Some girl shot at me the last time we were there because she thought I looked at her funny.” He sipped his beer. “Good fried mush, though.”

“Ten days from today.” Misha put his handheld back in a pocket and slid out of the booth. “Meet me and Chad. You won't regret it.” He took a bun and walked out of the bar.

“That wasn't totally a waste of time,” Jared said. “He paid for the buns. You think it's worth it to meet him? The reward's a lot of money but La Spina's a dumb place to get killed.”

“Who do you think got the contract?” Jensen asked, curious. “Why would they ask Misha for help? You need to find a missing person, you ask a bounty hunter or a PI. Not a couple of thieves.”

Jared ate another bun. “We can't just hang around for another ten days, though. I mean, I can, but we still need credits.”

“We'll go back to Sam's. She's gotta have something.”

She did.

“You're in luck,” she told Jared and Jensen, as they crowded into her tiny office in the back of her caffeine bar. “I just got a line on a bunch of crates of vapor sticks. Take them to Heda Station, see your friend with the hair.” She winked at Jensen.

Vapor sticks were considered addictive and so were taxed all across settled space. They were regulated especially tightly on space stations, which made them easy targets for smugglers and left customs officials open to bribes. Acquiring the crates, and then acquiring forged tax stamps and documentation, required some sweet-talking on Jared's part and some promises on Jensen's part and the very last of the credits on both their parts. But they'd make back their money and then some, and besides, Jensen hadn't seen Bob, the friend with the hair, in a while.

Bob was, among other things, their original contact on the station, the guy who had done the important work of introducing them to a customs officer willing to accept some credits to look the other way and allow the occasional shipment of contraband through.

“Everything looks good,” she said now, running her scanner over the many stamps and bar codes pasted and stamped on each crate. Jensen and Jared had docked the _Tombaugh_ and taken the vapor sticks off the ship for inspection. The scanner beeped cheerfully, indicating that all duties and taxes were marked as paid for one crate, then buzzed as it scanned a second one. “Hold on, this one's hinky.” She gave Jensen a meaningful look as she fiddled with the scanner. He nodded briefly, nudged Jared, and waited while the last of their credits were transferred from Jared's handheld to the officer's account.

“Probably just a glitch,” Jared said.

“We've been having problems with the scanners.” It beeped this time. “Now you're good to go. Duties paid, customs satisfied.” She patted the lid of the second crate and waved Jensen and Jared out to where Bob was waiting for them and their vapor sticks.

He'd buzzed his head. Now all his curls were reduced to a quarter inch of fuzz.

“What the hell,” Jared said. “Were you sick?”

Jensen jabbed him in the side, embarrassed, but Bob only laughed and ran a hand over his scalp. “You don't like it?” he asked, teasing. “My mom almost cried.”

“Sam's going to be so disappointed,” Jensen said. “Why did you do it?”

“I had an over-enthusiastic barber. No, I just wanted a change. You really don't like it?” Now he sounded a little disappointed himself.

“You're not 'Jensen's friend with the hair' anymore,” Jared said. “Now you're 'Jensen's friend with the peach fuzz'.”

“It'll grow back. The next time you're here, I'll have a full head of curly mess again.” He winked.

Heda Station was big and bustling, if a bit run-down once you got past the customs office and the administrative levels. The place kept slightly more laws than Port Wombat, but it was close enough to the freewheeling, semi-legal atmosphere of the port that Jensen was comfortable there. Besides, every time he and Jared swung by with contraband, Bob took them to an open cafe with cheap and delicious food once he'd taken possession of and paid for whatever they'd brought him.

“We need a grill,” Jared said, his mouth full. Jensen ignored him. They'd had this conversation before. “I know what you said about – holy shit.” He interrupted himself to smack Jensen on the arm with one hand and point with the other. “Is that _Sterling K Brown_?”

Jensen turned just in time to see a guy wearing a rust-orange jacket and flanked by a pair of bulky dudes in lightweight body armor vanish down a corridor.

“Oh, yeah,” Bob said, “he just did a show here last night. Total surprise. No one even knew he was in this sector until he pulled into a docking bay.”

Sterling K Brown's music wasn't really Jensen's taste – he preferred an actual rhythm and some lyrics – but Jared really liked the long, meandering songs the guy produced.

“You know where he's going next?” Jared asked.

“Not a clue.”

Jared sighed.

“He'll have to drown his sorrows with another order of mixed grill,” Jensen told Bob.

“Still the best grill on the station.” He glanced at his wrist. “I should get back to work. Meet you afterwards, yeah? 21:00, Blake's. Don't eat too much,” he told Jared. “I know a great place for dinner.”

“We're going to stalk Mr Brown,” Jared said, and Jensen wasn't sure if he was kidding.

Bob went back the docking bay where he had a legal job as a mechanic, and Jensen and Jared finished their food and promptly got lost trying to find a library terminal from which to research Sahar Technologies, Green Worlds, and anything else that might give them a clue as to whether or not Misha's missing-persons job was legit. Jared discovered a little news item about an environmental study being done at the research station on Bernon, and Jensen though he recognized the Sahar Tech CEO's name, but other than that, there was nothing. The moon and its terraforming failure had fallen out of the news cycle a few years ago, after the trial concluded and Green Worlds shut down. There just wasn't much worth knowing anymore.

At dinner Jensen casually asked if Bob knew anything about Sahar Tech.

“It's basically Green Worlds,” he said. “Remember them? I guess that's supposed to be kind of a secret.”

“Do you know anything about them, besides that?”

“Nah. Good friend of mine was a trainee tech for Green Worlds when it froze that moon, and she followed all the news about them for a while. She works for some ag outfit now. That whole thing scared her off terraforming.” He slurped up some noodles. “Why do you ask?”

“We know a guy,” Jensen said. “He's looking into it.”

“Huh. I can ask my friend, if you want, but I don't think she cares about Sahar. They're pretty straightforward and she does something else now.”

“Are you thinking we should meet Misha and Chad after all?” Jared asked Jensen later that night. They'd found a room in a hostel that catered mostly to freighter crews. The rooms were small and so were the shared showers, but Jensen didn't care as long as the water was hot, the pressure was good, and no one tried to steal his soap.

“I'm not sure,” he said now. “What do you think?”

“I think we should see what they have to say.” Jared flopped back on his bed. “I know you don't trust Chad – I don't really either – but they did get us that job with the diamonds, remember? That was a good haul.”

Jensen and Jared had smuggled the gems inside the hollow pull-up bars in the _Tombaugh_ 's tiny workout space, and Jensen still couldn't believe that worked. He'd outfitted his ship with an EMP cannon with the credits that job had earned.

“If this missing-persons thing really is a job, we need to know what our role is and what we're gonna make from it. I'm not making a decision until we get that solid.”

“Obviously.” Jared stretched. The bed was barely long enough for him. “Are freighters all crewed by short people? Why are these beds so short?”

“They're not short, you're just weirdly tall.” His handheld pinged, and he checked it to discover a message from Genevieve, that someone had apparently paid Adrianne's warrant and gotten her ship out of impound, because she'd left Port Wombat.

“Why's she telling us?” Jared asked.

“So we can warn Danneel, I don't know. I wonder who paid the warrant. I didn't think she had those kinds of friends.” Although he couldn't discount the possibility that someone had sprung her just to have her in their debt. He sent Danneel a quick message, just to warn her that Adrianne was free, and put it out of his mind.

Bob put the two of them in touch with an underground distiller who could sell them a load of untaxed hooch. It seemed all anyone wanted lately was to sneak stuff past the duty officers. Not that Jensen cared, but he didn't want to be pigeonholed. The distiller let him and Jared taste the liquor, which Jared proclaimed “Wicked” after recovering from a coughing fit. It was awful, but it was cheaper and would get you hammered faster than the legitimately-distilled stuff, so onto the _Tombaugh_ it went.

Jensen and Jared had enough credits to restock the _Tombaugh_ 's galley before they went on their way. They were several hours out when Bob pinged the ship to let them know he'd asked his friend about Sahar Tech, but she didn't have anything interesting to share that they didn't already know.

Jensen was fine with that. He wasn't expecting much, anyway.

Two days later he was in the engine room, tinkering with the sublight drive, when the comm on the wall buzzed and Jared asked him why the Sahar CEO might have gone private to find his daughter. Private contracts sometimes skirted the edge of legality and could thus be pretty shady, especially if you gave the contract to someone without a bounty or investigator license. It was the kind of thing mobsters turned to when they wanted to find a rat who had fled their organization, or that corporate overlords used to find former employees who had absconded with industry secrets, or that governments even occasionally took advantage of to find rogue spies or secret agents or even just garden-variety dissidents that someone didn't like.

“It's not a bounty,” Jared went on. Jensen heard chewing noises over the comm. “I mean, there's no warrant. It's just a missing-persons case. Why does it have to be private?"

“Missing persons show up on the public bounty feeds. Maybe Dad decided he didn't want every scruffy bounty hunter in settled space looking for his little girl.”

“Maybe. I still think it's a dumb idea to try and sell that napalm shit to the Unseen.”

They'd decided they may as well take their shipment of untaxed moonshine to La Spina and unload it there, so if Misha fell through they'd still get something out of the trip.

“You know any better bars on La Spina?”

“That one place, what's it called, the Hawk's Nest, their drinks were harsh but no one ever shot at me there.”

It was a thought. Jensen hadn't minded it the one time they went – Jared was right that the drinks weren't top quality, and it wasn't the nicest bar either of them had ever been to, but it also hadn't seemed like the kind of place that would turn down cheap liquor. They could try it first.

Jared had left the comm open and Jensen could still hear chewing as he sat back on his heels and squinted at the sublight drive. A reasonably competent engineer would be able to find a lot of the after-market work Jensen and Jared had done to it, and any ship's tech could tell it wasn't still factory-pristine, but very few people would know from looking how fast the _Tombaugh_ 's engine could go, how quickly it could push the ship across space, and how many bigger, heavier ships it had enabled Jensen and Jared to outrun.

It would have enabled them to outrun the law in Ayre those months ago, if the law hadn't set a trap and waited for them to fly right into it, like the idiots they sometimes were.

Chris still wanted his credits back for that. Jensen wiped his hands on his thighs and went out to the lounge, where Jared was snacking on reconstituted orange slices and reading something projected on the wall. There was music playing faintly in the background, probably Sterling K Brown's latest.

“What's that?” Jensen asked, pointing to the wall.

“Old news,” Jared said. “I was just looking up Alona Tal, the CEO's daughter. She was a scientist. She worked for Green Worlds. There was some charge of nepotism during the trial, but it didn't come to anything. She's got her name on some patents for some terraforming processes – it's all geoscience, I don't understand it – but they're all a few years old. There's nothing about her after Green Worlds closed up shop, just speculation as to what happened to her. Because her dad's company went ass-up, you know? And she worked for them.” He popped an orange slice in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, then poked at the screen in front of him. A new item appeared on the wall, half on top of the old news items. “Check it out. Sterling K Brown's doing a tour in the Cluster.”

Jensen read the text projected on the wall. A list of dates and places, at least six months into the future.

“Looks like we have some time to get tickets.”  
  
“You'd think so, wouldn't you? But he'll sell out really fast. He's really popular.”

“We'll try the Hawk's Nest first,” Jensen said, to change the subject. “See what they'll give us for the moonshine. If it's not enough, we'll go to the Unseen.”

“And then we'll meet Misha. We still owe Chris.”  
  
Jensen thought about the diamonds that had bought the _Tombaugh_ an EMP cannon, and the one time they'd had to use it. He and Jared could never go back to Gadyukino Sector – militaries took a dim view of you frying a pair of their fighter ships, even if you did do it in self-defense – but if nothing else he'd learned what a good investment that cannon was. And he had Misha to thank for that job.

He sighed. “If you get killed,” he told Jared, “I am not telling your mother.”

A day later they got a ping from Chris, reminding them in the friendliest tone possible that they still owed him for freeing them and their ship from the law.

“I'm just saying,” he concluded casually. “I'd hate to take her from you.”

“We have a line on a job,” Jensen told him. “We'll get you your credits. We've been paying you back.”

“It's the only reason I haven't come after you. But you're due another installment.”  
  
“I know, I know. We're on it.”  
  
Soon they were getting clearance from La Spina and putting the _Tombaugh_ down on the cracked asphalt of a landing field. La Spina the settlement took its name from La Spina the mountain range, a terrifyingly high ridge of sharp peaks curling half around the settlement and then swinging north. There were supposedly good hiking trails and camping spots along the base of the range, but as neither Jensen nor Jared were camping or hiking people – few spacers were – they'd never been. It was not Jensen's favorite place, violent bars aside, because the mountains made him feel hemmed in. He'd spent the first eighteen years of his life on the flat plains of a sparsely-settled planet, and the next ten flying freighters and spending most of his time in space. High mountains – anything, really, that so thoroughly blocked his view of the horizon and the sky – made him nervous.  
  
But Misha and Chad were theoretically here, and with them an equally theoretical job with a theoretically high payout, so he'd put up with the twitchy feeling on the back of his neck as long as it took to learn why they wanted to meet him and what he was going to get out of it.  
  
But first, they should unload the liquor. The owner of the Hawk's Nest took one sip of the contraband and spat it right out. Jensen thought she shouldn't pass judgement when the stuff she served was just as bad, but he let Jared try to convince her the taste could be disguised and she could make a good profit. Jared was much better at the sweet-talking, and Danneel had been right that people were nice to him because he was cute.  
  
The owner of the Hawk's Nest still wasn't interested in buying their contraband booze, so they cut their losses and hauled it to the Unseen, where the bartender was in charge of buying the liquor and knew whether or not it would sell. Apparently he thought it would, and after some haggling, he bought it all. Jensen immediately sent some credits to Chris.  
  
They'd conducted their business right over the bar counter, because clearly no one cared. The Unseen was dim and smoky and low-ceilinged, but at least today it wasn't too crowded. That not only made it easy to talk to the bartender but also cut down on the possibility of violence, for which Jared and Jensen were both grateful. They were also grateful for the bartender's offer of a free drink to seal the deal, as long as it wasn't the stuff he'd just bought from them.

A woman ambled up and put her elbows on the bar, chattering away at no one. Jensen could see a bright green bud in her ear, probably giving her a commlink to a ship or –

“What?” she snapped, her tone changing sharply. “Good Christ. Get him down. Now.” She tapped the bud, changing the channel, and demanded “Who gave Captain Ford clearance? Yes, he went up again. Stranded hikers or some nonsense. Man's ancient, get him down before he kills himself.” She pushed herself away from the bar and Jensen heard her saying “He what? 'You can't tell me what to do'? Like fuck I can,” before she vanished.

It occurred to Jensen that if air traffic control – which this woman probably was – was drinking at the Unseen, it probably wasn't as dangerous a bar as they previously thought. Jared must have caught that girl on a bad day, when she tried to shoot him.

They took their free drinks and found Chad holding down a table in a back corner, sipping a beer and glancing around.  
  
“Boys!” he cried, holding out his arms as if for a hug. Jared let himself be hugged. Jensen did not. “You got drinks! Come sit.”  
  
They sat.

“Where's Misha?” Jensen asked.  
  
“Getting another beer,” Misha said, appearing out of nowhere. “I knew you'd see sense.” He plopped down in a chair and slurped his beer. “Chad, tell them.”  
  
“The reward went up,” Chad said almost proudly.  
  
Misha pulled his beat-up handheld out of a pocket, brought something up on the scuffed screen, and passed it to Jensen. The same private contract he'd shown them in the Glass Lamp, to find Alona Tal, the daughter of Sahar Tech's CEO, for an even more obscene number of credits.  
  
Jensen whistled. He and Jared could almost retire on that.  
  
“Holy shit,” Jared breathed, reading over his shoulder. “Why is he offering so much?”  
  
“No one's worth that,” Jensen said. “Not if it's legal.”  
  
“She is,” Chad said. “Sahar Tech is very, very profitable, and the execs are very, very rich.”  
  
“Why do you need us?” This was directed at Misha, still drinking his beer. Chad looked smug to give them a reasonable answer.  
  
“She's on Bernon,” Misha said. “There really is a cult buried under the old settlement.”  
  
“Again, why do you need us? You know where she is, and you're not even the ones holding the contract.”  
  
“No, but we shook with the person who is.”  
  
Jensen heaved a sigh and pushed his chair back from the table. “Be straight with us, or we're leaving.”  
  
“Okay, truth?” Misha put down his glass. “The _Tombaugh_ 's the fastest ship I've ever seen. Much faster than the _Asmodeus_. You'll get the missing person, because you have the best chance of escaping with her. Then we'll all rendezvous, return her to Dad, and split the reward.”  
  
That was one of the dumbest things Jensen had ever heard. “We're going.” He stood and tapped Jared on the shoulder.  
  
“Wait,” Jared said. “There's gotta be more. And we still owe Chris. You don't want to lose your ship.”  
  
Misha gestured for the two of them to listen closely. Against his better judgement, Jensen sat back down.  
  
“This is the story,” Misha said, his voice quiet enough that Jensen and Jared had to lean very close to him to hear. “This Alona was a scientist for Green Worlds, right? And Green Worlds basically destroyed Bernon. Her dad's company, and some of her patents, wrecked a moon and killed people. We don't know why she joined the cult, but that's where she is. We need you because you're one of the best pilots I know and you have one of the fastest ships in settled space – I'm not just blowing smoke, I know how fast that thing can go – and if anyone comes after you, you'll leave them eating ions.”  
  
“We can't go to Bernon,” Jensen said. “We had a... run-in with a gun-runner in the general vicinity.” Jared looked at him curiously. “Katahdin. Cluny Sector.”  
  
“Shit,” Jared said, remembering. “The thing with the guns.”  
  
They hadn't thought it was any big deal at the time – just some small-time weapons smuggling to help out a struggling revolt on one of the little planets in that sector – how were they to know there was already a gun-running ring in place, and the head of the ring would take offense to them horning in on her action? They'd managed to escape Cluny Sector with their skins and ship mostly intact, but Kim, the gun-runner, was still working that part of settled space, and she'd know – and be pissed – if they came back.  
  
“Now we're really leaving,” Jensen said, annoyed, but Chad reached across the table and grabbed his arm to stop him.  
  
“We can figure this out,” he said. “We'll make a deal with – what's their name?”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“The gun-runner. What's the ring?”  
  
“Kim Rhodes.”  
  
“Oh, I know her.” Chad sat back, all confidence. “We go way back. She got her start on Groff, in the Cluster, back when me and Misha were baby lockbreakers. We did some jobs together. I'll talk to her, get her off your butts.”  
  
“Do it now. Otherwise we're walking.”  
  
Chad stood, took a swallow of his beer, and slid away into a dark corner.  
  
“We're fucked,” Jared commented almost cheerfully. “She still wants our hands.”  
  
“Trust in Chad,” Misha said. “And remember that you still owe credits on a loan with your ship as collateral, and we all know you don't want to lose her.”  
  
“Let me get this straight,” Jensen said, “because I don't trust in Chad. You want us to, what, sneak into a ruined settlement on a frozen moon, grab someone, and escape, just so you can claim a missing-persons reward?”  
  
“We'll split it equally.”  
  
“You still want us to do all the work. I don't care what Chad says – Kim still wants our skins and my ship, and you're asking us to take all the risk for just an equal share of the reward.”  
  
“We found this woman. She worked very hard to hide, and we know where she is. We're probably the only people in all of settled space who know, and that's worth as much as actually grabbing her.”  
  
“Who are you even working for?” Jared asked.  
  
“Working _with_ ,” Misha corrected.  
  
“Whatever. This isn't your job. It's not what you do. Why would anyone come to you to find a missing person?”  
  
A woman in a jumpsuit walked up to the table.  
  
“Hi boys,” said Adrianne.  
  
“Fuck me,” Jensen said, impressed in spite of himself.  
  
She leaned down next to Misha and put her elbows on the table so she could smile serenely at Jensen and Jared. “I have to tell you, it's so nice to breathe free air again.”  
  
“No one else would get her out of Port Wombat,” Misha said, “so she called us. We cleared the warrants for her and her ship. It was part of the deal.”  
  
“That couldn't have been cheap,” Jared said in disbelief.  
  
“You'd rather split a massive reward than owe someone?” Jensen demanded of Adrianne. “Your warrant was pocket change compared to that contract.” He could understand not wanting to be in someone's debt, but he couldn't understand splitting such a big reward to avoid it.  
  
Although he'd put up his ship as collateral on a loan to get himself and Jared out of jail, rather than work it off as part of someone else's crew, so maybe he did understand. That deal with Chris was turning out to be one of the dumber things he'd ever done. He felt like he'd have it hanging over his head forever.  
  
“So that's the plan,” Misha said. “I'd like to say you can think it over, but we need an answer now.”  
  
“We need one from Chad first.”  
  
“What's the problem here?” Adrianne asked.  
  
“There's a gun-runner working Cluny Sector who really doesn't want us there,” Jared told her. “Chad said he could make a deal with her, so we're waiting.”  
  
Adrianne hmphed, took Misha's glass, and drank. He made an annoyed noise. She just patted his hand. “Remember who brought you this job. So. Boys.” She directed herself to Jensen and Jared. “How've you been?” She grinned.  
  
It didn't take long for Chad to come back, but his news wasn't great. Kim would give them exactly thirty hours' grace in Cluny Sector, and once that time was up, if she or any of her crew saw the _Tombaugh_ , they were going to shoot her out of the sky.  
  
“That's no problem,” Chad said, waving his hand airily. “Misha did say you had the fastest ship in settled space.”  
  
“We'll do it,” Jared said. Jensen elbowed him hard. “What? It's a lot of credits, and thirty hours should be enough.”  
  
Adrianne looked at Jensen expectantly. Jared looked at him expectantly. Misha looked at him expectantly. Chad still looked smug.  
  
“Even if we run down the time,” Jared went on, “you know we can outrun any of Kim's ships.”  
  
“Her ships are armed, Jared,” Jensen said.  
  
“So's ours.”  
  
“You can pay off your debt all at once,” Misha said, and Jensen couldn't really argue with that.  
  
“We have to work with her.” He pointed to Adrianne, who pasted the fakest innocence he'd ever seen on her face. But he was much closer to saying yes, and everyone knew it. “Tell me the plan, in detail.”  
  
“First, we go to Bernon. Second, you take Adrianne to the surface. Third, Adrianne sneaks into the cult's compound and grabs Alona. Fourth, you all escape Cluny Sector. Fifth, we rendezvous here, call Dad, and turn her in for the reward. Sixth, we spend our credits.”  
  
“How are we landing on Bernon, and how's Adrianne getting inside the cult? There's nothing there but a research station, right? They'll have schedules of what's arriving and when, and that place is so inhospitable I can't put the _Tombaugh_ down just anywhere.”  
  
“That's covered,” Misha said. “The scientists made some kind of deal with the cult to stick sensors around the place. That's how Adrianne will get in. You have to bring the scientists something in exchange, though.”  
  
Of course they did.  
  
“What?” Jared asked.  
  
“They sent us a list.”  
  
“It's straightforward,” Chad said.  
  
“No it isn't,” Jensen countered. “We have to trust we can land on the surface in the first place, then we have to trust these scientists to get Adrianne into the cult compound, then we have to trust her to get the target without everyone getting up in arms, then we have to trust Kim, then we have to trust you.”  
  
“Then let me convince you,” Misha said, his voice uncharacteristically serious. “The cult renamed the dead settlement 'Purmort'. Pure Death.” He let that sink in. “It's a doomsday cult, Jensen. They have a short expiration date, and if Alona Tal stays there, it will kill her.”

“So we're rescuing her from certain death,” Chad said, “and getting well-paid in the meantime.”  
  
“We're still running all the risk,” Jensen pointed out.  
  
“Kim gave you thirty hours.”  
  
“And I'm going with you,” Adrianne said. “If you fuck up, I can lose the contract.”

“We'll take the job,” Jared said. “Yes, I'm going to speak for you,” he told Jensen. “We can do it. They did all the legwork. We just have to fly the ship.”

“If this comes back to bite us - “

“It won't,” Chad interrupted.

“I want you all to know this goes against my better judgement,” Jensen told the entire table, “and I'm only doing it because if it works, we can pay Chris off and still have enough credits to upgrade my ship in ways we can't even imagine yet. And if it doesn't work, we'll be dead, and it won't matter.”

“That's the spirit,” Misha said, clapping him on the back. “Now go get another drink and we'll shake on it.”

That night Jensen did what he thought was the last smart thing he was going to do for a while, and pinged Danneel on the screen in the _Tombaugh_ 's lounge. She didn't want in on the action – it was a private contract, and she respected that – but he wanted her to know where he vanished and who was likely responsible, if no one ever heard from him again.

“Come on, Jensen,” she said, “you can't go to Cluny Sector.”

“I know,” he said, “but I'm going anyway.”

“You really trust Chad made that good a deal?”

“I have to. I got a ping from Chris before we hit La Spina, just reminding me that we owe him another installment. We have to get out from under him. I can't have him take my ship.”

“You remember when I told you it was a bad idea to take a loan to pay your bail, and put up your ship as collateral?” She looked almost smug. “This is why.”

“It was either that or rot in jail. Jared and I weren't about to let someone bail us out just to make us work for them, and if we had, he'd have kept my ship anyway. Look, Danneel, this is our best option. I don't trust Chad and I sure as shit don't trust Adrianne, but we can pay off all our debt at once and be done.”

“How much is this woman worth?”

Jensen told her. She cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

“No one offers that much for a missing person. Not if they're on the up and up.”

“Does it matter?”

“I wouldn't trust it.”

Jared picked then to come into the lounge, rubbing his hair with a towel. “Hi, Danneel.”

“Hey,” Danneel said. “Jensen was telling me about your big score, and I was telling him no one puts up that much for a missing person unless there's something iffy going on.”

“I thought it was weird that it was a private contract, but we figured Dad just didn't want everyone and their dog looking for his daughter. He's got a lot of money. How's that iffy?” He sat on the edge of the table. Jensen nudged him to get off.

Danneel shrugged. “I don't know, but it doesn't smell right to me. Just be careful and keep your ears open.”

“Always do,” Jensen said. “Did you get your bounty in the Cluster?”

“Two days ago. He fought me like you have no idea, but I got a new trick.” She poked herself in the neck with a finger. “God's own tranqs. Made my life so much easier.”

“Are they pink?” Jared asked, grinning. “Maybe we could use those.”

“Hey, why are you on your ship and not in a rented room with a real bed and a real shower?”

“La Spina makes Jensen nervous.” Jared glanced at him. “I don't mind, but the mountains freak him out.”

“They're too tall and too close,” Jensen said. “Besides, we might have to take Adrianne on board before we leave, and I want as much time without her as I can get.”

“Watch out for her, okay?” Danneel said. “She has to split this reward and don't think for a minute she's satisfied with her split, as big as it might be. She'll cut you out without a second thought if she can.”

“We're watching,” Jared said, and grinned when Jensen rolled his eyes. “I'm speaking for Jensen tonight.”

“I should sign off. Let me know when you're done with this thing. We'll meet at Port Wombat and do something fun. Maybe we can even rope Genevieve in.” She blew them each a kiss and then the screen went blank.

“Get off the table,” Jensen said, nudging Jared again. Jared obliged this time. “Final check tomorrow morning, and we firm up our plans.”  
  
He did not want to take Adrianne to Bernon. He didn't trust her enough to want her on his ship, not when he still owed Chris and there was apparently a chance she might use that against him and Jared. Jensen thought it through overnight, and in the morning he gave Misha and crew one last condition: he and Jared would agree to snatch Alona Tal as long as they didn't have to ferry Adrianne back and forth through Cluny Sector. She could take the _Asmodeus_ with the rest of Misha's crew, and when they reached Bernon, she'd fly the ship's tiny landing pod to the surface. She'd grab Alona, hand her off to Jensen and Jared, and fly the landing pod back. Jensen and Jared would keep Alona as assurance, and then they'd all meet back at La Spina.  
  
Jensen didn't think this was a great plan, but so far nothing sounded like a great plan, and it would keep Adrianne off his ship. But Adrianne said no, absolutely not, she was going to the surface of Bernon in the _Tombaugh_ or the whole deal was off, did they really think she'd let her target out of her sight for any reason?  
  
Jared spoke for Jensen again - “We need the credits too bad to turn this down, and you know it” - Misha and Chad loaded the crate of stuff for the scientists onto the _Tombaugh_ , Adrianne collected her things from the _Asmodeus_ , Jensen plugged the coordinates for the research station into his ship's navigation system, and they were off.

“This is one for the records,” Jared commented, as they left La Spina and its terrifying mountains behind them. “Our first missing person.”

They'd smuggled people before, but those folks were in on the plan. This was definitely the first time they'd be smuggling someone who had no idea they were coming.

And Danneel and Jared had both voiced Jensen's own silent thoughts – why was this CEO offering so much, and why didn't he go to a licensed PI or even a bounty hunter to find his daughter? Jensen wondered idly if Alona had stolen something from Green Worlds before she vanished, and her father wanted it back.

But that was absurd. Bernon had been destroyed, and Green Worlds put on trial, several years ago. Green Worlds had apparently been allowed to just rebrand itself as Sahar Tech and keep doing its thing. Why would it suddenly matter now if someone had stolen something back then?

His original suggestion to Jared was probably right, that Dad didn't trust any of the bounty hunters working settled space. Would Jensen want some unknown grabbing his little girl, if he probably had enough money to buy and sell half the Cluster? That kind of pedigree, you wanted someone you knew, and could trust.

Not that he'd trust Adrianne, himself, but Dad either didn't know her reputation, or didn't care. Or it was a feature, not a bug.

And aside from all that, there was something annoyingly familiar about Dad. He had a different last name from Alona, but that wasn't necessarily relevant. It could have been her choice, for professional reasons. Jensen was pretty sure the familiarity was related to some deal with the mining conglomerate, from when he was still flying freighters – maybe it wasn't a good deal? - and while it probably wasn't important in the grand scheme of things, it was nagging at him.

Well, it didn't matter now. Jensen and Jared had made a deal with Misha and shook on it, and Misha had made a deal with Adrianne, and Adrianne held the contract to which they were all bound. Danneel knew what was going on in case something happened. The _Tombaugh_ 's fuel cells were fresh. The EMP cannon was charged, just in case. Adrianne accepted that she'd have to share the spare cabin once she got her target. They were as ready as they could ever be.

The trip to Bernon passed without much issue, although suddenly having to share the ship with someone in addition to Jared was an adjustment for Jensen. He and Jared tinkered with the ship, played holo-chess, exercised. Adrianne commented snidely on the galley facilities. Jared made her and Jensen listen to Sterling Brown's most recent song sequence on repeat, and when she admitted it was pretty good, Jared was insufferable for three days. Chris sent them a payment reminder. Genevieve sent them a message to tell them to come see her when they were done.

“Is Adrianne Palicki really traveling with you?” she asked.

“Yep,” Jared said. “I don't know why Danneel's all bent out of shape about her. She's not that bad. She likes _The Hidden Country in the Last Bend of the Swirl_ and she agrees with me that we should install a grill in the galley.”

“But can she cook?” Genevieve grinned.

“Better than me. Not as good as you.”

“Not as good as me, either,” Jensen added.

“My ears are burning,” Adrianne called from elsewhere in the ship. “I know you're saying nice things about me.”

Jensen rolled his eyes. Genevieve giggled. They were chatting with her through Jared's handheld to avoid just this kind of eavesdropping.

“You need to turn off your internal comms, Jensen,” Genevieve said. “You know smugglers have very sharp ears.”

“So who are we talking to?” Adrianne asked casually, walking into the lounge. “If that's Danneel Harris, give her my love.”

“If it was Danneel you'd have heard more swearing,” Jensen said. “Is there any hot water left?”

But as much as he hated to admit it, Adrianne wasn't the worst passenger they'd ever had. She wasn't at all considerate when it came to noise, food smells, or length of showers, but at least she cleaned up after herself and she hadn't been poking around the engines or screwing with the navigation systems or (as far as Jensen or Jared knew) sending messages that could get them in trouble. So far, she was sticking to the plan as much as they were. They didn't think she'd even called Dad to let him know she was on his daughter's trail.

Jensen had finally figured out why the guy's name was familiar. The mining conglomerate had indeed done some work with Green Worlds – tech stuff, mostly, but Jensen remembered contract jobs going up for flying the seeding ships that started the terraforming process – word had gone around the freighters that Green Worlds was a shit contract and the CEO was especially ruthless. _Fish stinks from the head_ , one of Jensen's crew chiefs had said.

The mining conglomerate wasn't perfect by any measure, when it came to squeezing work out of its employees – Jensen had indentured himself for ten years and they held him to that, to the minute, and because he couldn't quit they didn't bother to treat him well – but the owners were garden-variety corporate dicks, not complete criminals. Jensen knew he'd forgotten details about Alona's dad because they hadn't been important at the time, but what he could remember now wasn't great. He hadn't been surprised when the guy came out the other side of the trial completely clean, and wasn't surprised that he was now the CEO and owner of another big corp. People like that always got away.

The _Tombaugh_ was at the edge of Cluny Sector when Misha pinged the ship to review the plan. Jensen brought him up on the screen in the lounge for ease of conversation.

“We got your landing code from the research station,” Chad said, appearing over Misha's shoulder. “We're sending it now.”

“You'll set down on their landing pad,” Misha said. “The contact's name is Lupita. She'll take delivery of the crate, make sure everything's there, and then take Adrianne to the old settlement. You'll wait on your ship. Keep an eye out. As soon as Adrianne gets back with Alona, you go. We'll meet you on La Spina. Go straight there. Do not stop for anything.” He sounded very serious.

_What do you think we're going to stop for?_ Jensen thought. _Coffee?_

“You got thirty hours from the second you cross into the sector,” Chad added from off-screen. “Don't fuck up.”

“Charge your engine. It's go time.” Misha signed off and the projection went blank.

“Strap in,” Jensen told Jared and Adrianne, hustling into the cockpit. They could use the sublight engine to get to Bernon, but that drained the fuel cells and he didn't want to risk running them down. They'd just have to speed the old-fashioned way.

Fortunately they'd gone around the long way, to enter Cluny Sector as close to Bernon as possible, and they were maybe twelve hours away from the moon if they burned ions and didn't run into any patrols. Jensen had no idea how Adrianne planned to extricate Alona from the cult compound, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, but if she managed it without alerting anyone, and without hurting anyone, he'd revise his opinion of her a little bit.

A little less than twelve hours later, they were there. Jensen checked the landing gear, the fuel gauge, the landing code. Everything was in order. The skies over Bernon were clear, the atmosphere thin and cold. There was nothing to see as the _Tombaugh_ descended but fields and fields of emptiness, broken by the occasional sharp hill or rocky crag, everything covered in blinding snow and flat white ice. The ruins of the settlement were just dark enough to stand out, sand-colored buildings cracking in the cold and roads and sidewalks hidden under all the white. The research station, however, was painted black, and the landing pad had been cleared of snow and ice. There was a speeder parked near the station, but the pad was otherwise empty. Someone was clearly prepared for their arrival. Jensen set the _Tombaugh_ down, pinged the station, and waited.

It wasn't long before two figures wearing what looked like slimmed-down black atmosphere suits came out of a hatch in the side of the building. One of them was pulling a dolly with a box on it. The _Tombaugh_ 's comms crackled.

“Jensen and Jared and Adrianne, right?” a voice said. “I'm Lupita. Let me in.”

A blast of intensely cold air preceded the two figures and the dolly through the ship's starboard hatch. “Fucking hell,” Jared said under his breath, but whether that was for the cold or the sight of two people dressed for a spacewalk standing in the ship, Jensen wasn't sure. The smaller one of them pulled off the suit's facemask, revealing a woman with a round face, hair cut close to her scalp, eyes bright and mouth grinning. She held out a hand, giggled as Jared tried to shake, and let him shake her thumb instead.

The crate was waiting in the loading bay. Jared cracked it open for Lupita and waited while she checked the contents against the list on a small handheld strapped to her forearm. Her companion just stood there, watching and looking intimidating in the black suit with the facemask still on.

“Perfect,” Lupita said, indicating that Jared could close it up again. She indicated the box she'd brought, which her companion took off the dolly. “That's for Adrianne. Otherwise you'll freeze to death,” she explained, as Adrianne held up the suit that had been in the box, apparently measuring it for size. “Winston will take you to the ruins in our speeder. He'll check our sensors while you're doing your thing. We're pretty sure the cult has a cannon, so we have to be careful with them. I can bring you boys something hot while you're waiting. We don't know how long it will take.”

“No, we're good,” Jensen told her, “but thanks.” He and Jared and the other scientist, whose name was apparently Winston, loaded the crate onto the dolly. “We're going to take off as soon as we can. Thanks for helping us out.” Lupita had taken off her gloves to check the crate and hadn't put them back on, so he and Jared could shake her hand like normal people.

“We get supplies out of it, you rescue a girl from a death cult. I hope you know a good deprogrammer. Do you need help with the suit?” she asked Adrianne, who had already taken off her boots to put the thing on. Adrianne shook her head, but Lupita had to help with the facemask anyway. Lupita put her own facemask back on, followed by the gloves, and gave Jensen and Jared a thumbs-up. Adrianne gave them a thumbs-up. They let everyone out, shut the hatch as soon as the dolly was through, and looked at each other.

“They don't know why we're really here,” Jared said. “They think we've been hired to get Alona away from the cult, not because there's a reward for her.”

Jensen shrugged. “If you look at it a certain way, we were hired to get her away from the cult. It's just that the guy who hired us didn't know that's where she was when he offered the contract.”

“Now what?”

“We wait. I kick your ass at holo-chess some more.”

Misha pinged them a couple of hours later to see how it was going. Jensen had won two games of holo-chess, lost one by making a spectacularly stupid move, talked Jared out of trying some really weird snack combinations, and had a thought.

“Why are we doing this in the middle of the day?” he asked Misha. “They'll see us coming.”

“No, they won't,” Misha said. “This time of year, you only get a couple hours of full dark anyway.”

“Do I really want to know how Adrianne's planning to get that woman out?”

“Probably not.”

“You have any idea how long this is going to take?”

“Nope. Less than six hours, hopefully.” Misha didn't want Kim coming after Jensen and Jared any more than they did.

“We should've taken Lupita up on her offer of something hot,” Jared said. “How cold is it outside?”

That was probably a rhetorical question but Misha answered anyway. “You'll get frostbite in ten seconds flat and your nose will fall off.”

That explained the black atmo suits.

“Ouch.”

“That's why you're down there and we're up here.” Now he sounded smug. He sounded like Chad.

“I thought we were down here because I have the fastest ship in settled space,” Jensen said.

“That too. No sign--”

The comms crackled and spat, and through them Adrianne yelled “Open the fucking hatch! We're almost there!” Jensen thought he could hear something that sounded suspiciously like a laser gun behind her words.

“Gotta go,” he told Misha, cutting off the comms.

This time he and Jared both put on heavy coats before opening the hatch, so when Adrianne and Winston brought the CEO's daughter inside the _Tombaugh_ , they were prepared. Alona had apparently been zipped into what looked like a space-safe sleeping bag slung over Winston's shoulder. Jared directed them into the spare cabin while Adrianne struggled out of the borrowed atmo suit and Jensen got ready to go.

As soon as Winston had collected the suit and was clear of the ship, they took off. Jensen wanted to be free of this place and its brilliant white, dead nothingness as soon as possible.

Besides, if Lupita was right and the cultists did have a cannon, he wasn't sticking around to meet it. He guessed they had something, because that sound behind Adrianne was definitely a weapon.

Bernon fell away behind them as they ascended through the layers of atmosphere, closer and closer to the familiar blackness of space and its millions upon millions of stars. Jensen had never minded staying on the surface – the showers were better, for one thing, and sometimes the beds were bigger, and he liked being able to breathe fresh air and spend time with his friends in person – but there was something to be said for the weightlessness of space, the freedom of it, the great empty uninhabited dimensions of it. On land you could only travel along a flat plane, but in space you could go in any direction you could point, with no more effort than what it took to nudge your steering gear of choice.

And you could vanish quicker, if you had to.

“Blues coming up on starboard,” Jared said, leaning forward to try and look around the windshield.

“What?” No cult would call the law on them. It went against their nature.

“Could be just a standard patrol.”

Cluny Sector was on the edge of settled space, and while ships could – and did – travel the vast unsettled distances of the rest of the universe, the fringes were especially attractive to criminals, and patrol ships out for a routine look-see were not uncommon. Jensen and Jared had actually expected this, although they'd expected it coming into the sector, not leaving.

“Hailing the _Tombaugh_ ,” came the unmistakably clear, no-nonsense voice of a law enforcement officer over the comms, “Colony Cluster regis--”

It wasn't a routine patrol, not if an officer was going to call them by name and announce their registration.

“Adjust for sublight,” Jensen interrupted, leaning towards the comm on the dashboard so Adrianne could hear him as well. He entered the first coordinates he could think of into the navigation system. He could be panicking, but considering he and Jared had only recently gotten in trouble with the law, he wasn't sticking around long enough for it to happen again.

“Are we wanted in this sector?” Jared demanded. Adrianne's voice over the internal comms asked the same thing.

“You want to ask them and find out?” Jensen answered.

Three law enforcement ships came around from the _Tombaugh_ 's starboard side. They were small, fast cruisers, the kind you sent out when you were trying to catch someone. “You are in violation of--” the officer went on.

“Didn't think so. Punch it.”

The stars stretched and snapped around them as the _Tombaugh_ jumped to sublight speed, not as fast as light – not yet – but still faster than any human had the right to travel, seeming to vanish from the sight of Cluny Sector law enforcement and reappearing in another sector at least a week's hard flying away.

“Where are we?” Jared asked, a little breathless. Traveling at sublight speed felt like very nearly leaving gravity, like every single organ in your body, every bone in your skeleton, was on the verge of being rearranged. It felt like being a second away from your very self scrambling into something unrecognizable. The very first time Jensen had ever traveled that fast, he threw up. Sometimes people passed out.

Oh shit. Their passenger.

“Stay here,” he said, unbuckling himself so he could check on her.

“Are we wanted there?” Jared repeated, unbuckling himself as well. He didn't move, just tried to catch his breath.

“The hell was that?” Adrianne demanded over the comms. She sounded a little breathless too.

“Kim didn't call them,” Jared went on. “The cult wouldn't. Misha wouldn't. The woman we, uh, Alona Tal, she didn't. Is there a warrant out for us?”

“I didn't think so,” Jensen said. “You'd think Misha and Chad would have found out, what with all the other looking they did into our records.”

“We'd know.”

“Obviously we didn't. Stay here and keep an eye out. Let Misha know we got the woman but don't tell him what just happened.” Jensen pushed himself out of his seat and went to check on their passenger.

They'd left the comm open in the spare cabin, just in case she woke up, and he was mentally composing what he was going to say when he came around a bend in the corridor and saw Adrianne had beaten him to it.

“Did you do this?” Jensen hissed at her, waving in a random direction to indicate the blues they'd just escaped.

“Am I stupid?” she hissed back, then held a finger to her lips as a shaky female voice demanded “Where am I? What's going on? What do you want?” over the comms. Adrianne hit the button in the wall and the door to the cabin slid open.

She was sitting on the bottom bunk, gripping the edge of the mattress with both hands. Adrianne's stuff was everywhere. Alona was wearing a shapeless black shift and slippers. They must have grabbed her while she was asleep. She didn't look anything like the picture on the contract – she looked older, for one thing, and she had brown hair coming out of a long braid, and she was pale and breathless and looked both scared and determined. 

“What's he offering you?” she asked Jensen and Adrianne, her voice still shaking a little. “I can pay you more to let me go.”

“You're not being kidnapped,” Jensen said. “We're rescuing you. Your dad put up a reward.”

“He hired me to find you,” Adrianne added.

Alona stared at them for a second, then pushed herself off the bunk and shoved past them. “He's my stepfather,” she called from the corridor, then “You're not taking me back. If you do, he'll kill me.”

“You know where we are?” Jared's voice came over the internal comms. “We're near your mining colony! Why'd you bring us here?”

Jensen hadn't even been thinking when he gave the navigation system a set of coordinates to get them away from Cluny Sector, but he'd flown for Badger Mining for a third of his life, and the coordinates for the mine that served as his crew's base were burned into his brain. He could get there from anywhere in settled space without thinking, more than he could get to the planet where he'd been born and where his parents raised him. The only other place he could find with his eyes closed was Port Wombat. But he wouldn't have gone back there, not with the law on his tail.

They were out of range of the mining colony and the moon on which it sat, and he was amazed and amused that this was where he came in a panic. But he'd have to dissect it later. Right now he had a runaway to catch.

She'd found the cockpit and seemed to be letting Jared calm her down.

“We're not going to hurt you, promise,” Jared was saying when Jensen and Adrianne caught up. The cockpit was just big enough for the four of them. “We saved you from the death cult.”

“You're sending me back to my death,” she said. She sounded calmer, much firmer, and no longer scared. “What did my stepfather offer you? I can offer you more. I have--” She cut herself off mid-sentence. “Never mind. I can offer you more.”

“Do you know why the blues came after us?” Jensen asked her. He looked at Adrianne. “Do you?”

“It got a little messy at the ruins,” Adrianne said, “but the cult wouldn't call the blues. You're more likely to be wanted in that sector than me.”

“What did you do?” Alona asked.

“Oh, there's the matter of a gun-runner....”

“That's not what she means,” Jared interrupted.

“You don't--” Alona started to say, but Jared interrupted her too.

“We came to get you. It's legal, we have a contract. Well, Adrianne does.”

“We should have this talk in the lounge,” Jensen said, starting to herd the women out of the cockpit.

Jared got out of the co-pilot's seat and followed them into the lounge. The external comms pinged and they heard Misha demanding to know where they were. Jensen brought him up on the wall screen and explained that blues found them in Cluny Sector and they'd had to jump.

“Alona's safe,” he added, gesturing for her to move in front of the lens on the wall so Misha could see.

“I don't care what my stepfather is paying you,” she repeated. “I can offer more.”

“I won't break the contract,” Adrianne said.

“Tell him you found me and I was dead. I vanished once, I can do it again.”

“Why?” Misha asked. “You don't want to go home? We saved you from a death cult.”

“I went there on purpose. You don't know what I did. You don't know what I know.”

“What do you know?”

“We kind of do know what you did,” Jared added.

“We can discuss this further on La Spina. How soon can you get there?”

“If you take me back to my stepfather,” Alona said again, “he'll have me killed. You have to believe me.”

“Three weeks,” Jensen said to Misha. “Three weeks from tomorrow. We'll meet you at your favorite bar.”

“That's too--” Misha started to say, but Jensen cut him off. The wall went blank.

“Now,” he said, turning to Alona, “first things first. I'm Jensen, this is Jared and Adrianne, that was Misha, my ship is called the _Tombaugh_ , and is it okay if we call you Alona?”

“I want to know how you found me,” was her answer. He was going to take that as a yes.  
  
“We didn't,” Jared said. “Misha did.”

“ _I_ did,” Adrianne said. “I have friends in low places. Your father offered me a contract to find you, I got Misha to help me, he enlisted these two clowns because he thinks they have the fastest ship in settled space, and here we are.”

“She _is_ the fastest ship in settled space.” Jared grinned, as proud of the _Tombaugh_ as if she were his.

“Now why do you think your dad wants you dead?” Jensen asked.

“I don't think,” Alona said, “I know. Stop calling him my father. He's my _step_ father. He married my mother when I was twelve.”

Well, Jensen thought, that explains the last names.

“You know what happened on Bernon,” Alona went on. It wasn't a question. “It wasn't an accident. Green Worlds – directed by my stepfather – destroyed the moon on purpose.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Jared said. “Why would they do that?”

“Do you know how wealthy people stay wealthy, and how wealthy corporations continue to offer high returns to their shareholders? They cut every corner they can. When they're caught out, they claim it was simple human error, offer up a scapegoat, and wipe their hands of the whole thing. And because they have lawmakers in their pockets, they get away with it.”

“What does this have to do with Bernon?”

“Green Worlds wanted to determine how cheaply they could terraform. Bernon was their proof of concept. My stepfather knew the climate would likely collapse – I told him, as did others on the sci-tech team – but he and the other shareholders considered the settlement and everyone on it an 'acceptable loss'. Because what are the lives of a thousand people, compared to the vast profits he could make? Even having to make restitution was nothing in comparison.”

“Shit,” Jared said.

“Exactly.” Alona tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. “Sahar has that tech now. Some of it is my tech, my patents. They used Bernon to figure out where they went wrong, so now they can terraform on the cheap, but still charge the same.”

“And you can prove all this?” Jensen asked. “That's what you can offer us – proof that Green Worlds destroyed Bernon intentionally? What's the point?” Green Worlds was a dead end for anyone who wanted restitution, and Jensen was pretty sure no one who'd been exonerated at the trial could be tried again.

“And how much is it worth?” Adrianne asked.

“They used my research,”Alona said, “my patents, and my team – they used _me_ – to deliberately obliterate a settlement full of people and render an entire moon uninhabitable. They always intended to write off the loss in service of future profits. I hid on Bernon out of guilt, and to get away from my stepfather.”

“If Adrianne hadn't gotten that contract, you'd still be there,” Jared said, “waiting to die.” He and Jensen both remembered what Misha had said - _It's a doomsday cult, and if she stays there, it will kill her._

“A doomsday cult seems like a risky place to hide,” Jensen added.

“My work unintentionally helped kill a thousand people,” Alona said, more anger in her voice than Jensen would have expected for such a confession. “I had to atone for that in the place it happened.” She took a deep breath and went on. “Besides, there's no doom in that cult. It's people living in the most inhospitable place they could find, suffering to purify themselves before they die, whenever that happens.”

_Either Misha was misinformed_ , Jensen thought, _or he lied to us when he said it was a doomsday cult, just to convince us to do this._

“My stepfather hired you to find me,”Alona went on, “because he knows that I know the truth about Bernon, he thinks I can prove it, and he doesn't trust me to keep my mouth shut. He must be planning something for Sahar, and I'm a liability.”  
  
“That explains why he offered so much. Missing person contracts that large are usually so big because someone wants something that's not entirely legal.”

“Like, a mob boss will offer a lot to catch a rat who's gone on the run,” Jared said.

“Sounds like my stepfather,” Alona said. “But that's why you can't turn me over to him. You're not bounty hunters, are you?”

“No,” Jensen said. “Not officially. Neither is Misha.”

“I'm going to guess that whatever you are, it isn't legal. If you had the law on your side, you'd have come to the door with a warrant to compel the cult to turn me over. You wouldn't have drugged me and smuggled me out of Purmort.”

“You drugged her?” Jared demanded of Adrianne, who shrugged. “We know some good forgers. We could've mocked up a warrant.”

“That wouldn't have worked,” Jensen told him. “The cult would just ignore it. Besides, a warrant doesn't make sense for a missing person.”

“We'd pretend it was for a bounty.”

“In any case,” Alona said, “my stepfather's right. I can prove the truth of what he did. I can offer you enough blackmail material to make breaking your contract with him worthwhile. Tell your friend – Misha – tell him that too.”

“You don't think he'll still come after you?” Jared asked.

“My stepfather? I know he will. That's why you're going to help me fake my death.” She was very matter-of-fact, for planning to die.

“How do we know you have proof of what Green Worlds did?” Adrianne asked. “How do we know it's any good?”

“I can show you. I hid it,” Alona added, apparently reading the next question on Jensen's face. “I knew they'd destroy all the evidence, so I gathered everything I could and buried it.”

“You're sure no one knew you were on Bernon?” Jared asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Then why did the blues come after us? They knew we were there and they said we were in violation of something, but that's when we jumped so we don't know what they were after us for.”

“We'll look on the feeds,” Jensen said. “We could be wanted for the guns.”

“Taking bets now that you are,” Adrianne said.

“You're not wanted where we are now, are you?” Alona asked.

“No,” Jensen said. “Where did you hide all your evidence?”

“Some of it was in Purmort, as insurance. I don't want you go to back there, don't worry. I need a secure terminal and I'll get everything for you. Then you can think over my offer.” Jensen and Jared looked at each other, then at Adrianne. They weren't a party to the contract between her and Alona's stepfather, so they could technically do what they wanted. But they'd made a deal with Misha, who'd made a deal with Adrianne. It was her contract to break, and it would be hard to plot against her while she was on their ship.

“Think about it,” Alona said. She unfolded herself and stood up. “I need a shower. Where's the bathroom?”

Jensen waited with Adrianne in the lounge while Jared found a towel and some soap and left Alona to wash.

“Her dad won't come after us,” Jared said, coming back with a bag of spicy dried soybeans. He offered the bag to Jensen. They were going to have to restock the galley now that they had a fourth passenger. “I mean stepdad. Could he go after Misha? Misha could take us down with him.”

“No, he'd go after me,” Adrianne said. She took the bag from Jared, dug out a handful of soybeans, and gave the bag back. “It's my contract.”

“You think Misha will put up a fight?”

“Who cares? The deal is with me, and you may find this hard to believe, but I don't plan to break it. I still expect to deliver Alona to her stepfather. Misha will probably weigh the reward for the bounty with the potential payoff for the blackmail, assuming that's what Alona really has, and if it's worth what she says. But it doesn't matter what Misha wants, because, again, my contract. Besides, we have Alona and he doesn't.”

“What are you thinking?” Jensen asked Jared. “We should listen to her?”

“I don't know.” Jared popped a handful of soybeans in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I think she's telling the truth. I mean, I think she has evidence on Green Worlds that's bad enough to bring her stepdad down. I don't know if it's worth more than the reward for her, though, or if we'll end up in jail again. I don't want to go back to jail.” He licked spicy soybean dust off his fingers. “They'll take the ship.”

“I know. They'll probably have to fight Chris for her. Shit. He's going to be expecting his next installment.”

“You know my contract is a sure thing, right?” Adrianne said. “And you know blackmail isn't, right?”

“The contract's not worth it if Alona's stepdad is going to kill her,” Jared said. “And the blackmail could be worth more. Tell Misha we have something bigger.” He nodded in the direction of the head, where Alona was presumably washing punishment cult off herself.

“Okay,” Jensen said, bringing up the screen on the wall again. This time he also launched a notes program, to list the pros and cons of Alona's proposal. He tapped out ideas on the display embedded in the table. “Taking Alona at her word. Pros: more money. Pay off Chris all at once. Save a woman from certain death.” He glanced between the display, now showing a keyboard, and the words appearing on the wall. He could hear Jared crunching through his snack. “Cons: break a contract.”

“We're not a party to it,” Jared interrupted. “That doesn't matter.”

“It matters to me,” Adrianne said. “Am I just shouting into the void here? Do you boys understand that I hold the contract, so whatever happens to Alona is ultimately my call?”

Jensen erased and retyped. “Adrianne breaks the contract. Alona's stepdad comes after us. He goes after her. We don't get paid. Jail. A warrant for kidnapping.” He paused to look at Jared. “That's what he's gonna do if we don't bring her back. He'll charge us with kidnapping. That carries a big bounty.”

“Huh.” Jared pointed at the wall. “Look where it says 'Pay off Chris all at once'.”

“Oh, for--” Adrianne shoved Jensen out of the way and typed “ADRIANNE IS NOT BREAKING THE CONTRACT” under “Cons”. She looked from Jared to Jensen and said “For the last time, you dribbling morons, Alona is my contract, what happens to her is my call, and however this shakes out hits my future prospects. I know what Harris is telling people about me. She's not wrong about one thing – if she can't keep her hands on her own jobs she doesn't deserve to have them. But I care about my reputation outside her cliqueish little bounty hunter circle. I don't give the first fuck what bounty hunters think of me, as long as they don't get in my way when I'm trying to earn my credits. And you know how I do that? You know how I make my money? _I don't break my fucking contracts.”_

“You're on my ship,” Jensen said, as calmly as he could manage.

“So what? I know you well enough to know you're not going to space me, and you're not stopping anywhere between here and La Spina to boot me off. We all know you're stuck with me. As long as you have Alona, you have me, and for the very last damn time, I am not breaking my contract with her stepfather.”

“What would it take?” Jared asked.

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit,” Jensen said.

“I don't believe her.”

“What if you're wrong?” Jared asked.

“It's not my problem.”

“We'll tell Alona's stepdad there was an accident, she was killed, the contract's void. It won't be your fault, so your reputation will be intact.”

“And how are you going to make that work? Do you have any idea how to fake someone's death?”

They didn't.

Jared crumpled up the now-empty snack bag and stretched. “I hate sublight. My skeleton's all out of true. Look, Adrianne, if we take her back to her stepdad he'll space her. That's what she said. He deliberately let a thousand people die – you don't think he'd do the same to his stepdaughter? I don't want that on my conscience and I bet you don't either. You're not a monster.”

Adrianne looked at the two lists on the wall. Jensen followed her gaze. There was good money to be made there, and a lot of risks to take. But he knew what men like Alona's stepfather were like. He knew how little they cared about regular working people. He knew from his own experiences as a regular working person. He had heard nothing to suggest Stepdad had changed – he didn't expect to hear it either - everything suggested Stepdad was fully capable of spacing his stepdaughter to protect his own interests.

“When I was flying freight,” Jensen told Adrianne, “the mining conglomerate did some work with Green Worlds, and we were offered a bunch of contracts to fly seeding ships. They were all shit contracts, and Green Worlds was a shit company to work for. That attitude comes from the top.”

“And that means what?” Adrianne said. “It's a big corp. They're all shit. I don't care as long as my contract pays out.”

“I'm just saying Alona could be right, because I know the kind of guy her stepfather is.”

“Oh my god, Jensen, you talk like you know the man personally. He's a CEO. They're all psychopaths. So are a lot of bounty hunters. So are a lot of sector blues. So fucking what? You're taking Alona at her word. She basically wiped herself off every official record to hide on that moon, and she did it for a reason. She'll keep making shit up to stay hidden. I don't care if either of you believe her, I need to see what she has before I make any kind of decision.”

Well, it was progress from “I'm taking her to her stepdad no matter what.” At least Adrianne was considering an alternative.

“And right now?” she went on. “That decision is 'I'm turning her in to her stepfather to get my credits'.”

Okay, so it wasn't progress.

“We're not turning her over to her stepfather if he's gonna space her,” Jared said.

“Her evidence might not be as good as she says.”

“What if it is?”

Adrianne shrugged. She swiped at the display, wiping the pro/con list off the wall, and said “Blackmail has never been a sure thing, not when you're dealing with someone with that kind of power. But signed contracts? Even rich men pay those.” She got up and stalked out of the lounge.

“At least you and I are on the same screen,” Jared said to Jensen. He got up to throw out the soybean bag.

“I'm not sure we are,” Jensen said.

“What? You just told Adrianne--”

“I know what I said. My instinct is to trust Alona but Adrianne's right – we need to see what she has first. We have no security in this thing, you know that. We're trusting Adrianne to cut us in on her missing persons contract, but if she has no contract, we have no guarantee. And if we have no guarantee, we have no credits, and if we have no credits, I lose my ship.”

Jared sighed. “We should probably find out why blues came after us in Cluny Sector, too. Do you really think there's a warrant out for us?”

The console in the table pinged and when Jensen accepted the message, Danneel came up on the wall. She looked entirely unconvinced about something.

“Genevieve told me you've got Adrianne Palicki onboard,” she said. “How did that happen? Do you ever listen to anything I tell you?”

“It's because we're going after her missing person,” Jensen said. “Either she came with us or there was no deal, and we really need the credits. But there's a problem.”

“Two problems,” Jared corrected.

“Did you get her?” Danneel asked. “The missing person?”

“Yeah. She's cleaning up right now.”

“How'd it go?”  
  
“Blues came after us,” Jensen said, “but not because of her. They hailed the ship by name and registry and we jumped to sublight.”

“Shit.” Danneel sat back in her chair. “Why?”

“We don't know. There must be a warrant out for us that no one knew about. That's one of our problems.”

“You didn't check as soon as you were free of them? Where are you now, anyway?”

“Itoh Sector. Over Yezhovo.” Danneel raised an eyebrow. She knew what that meant. “Shut up. It was the first place I thought of.”

“You're so funny. You hated that place and yet that's where you go in a panic. Let me look you up.” She pulled out a handheld, swiped, tapped, squinted. “Well, fuck. Guess what, boys, you're wanted in Cluny Sector.”

“The thing with the guns?” Jared hazarded.

“Looks like.” The display on her handheld popped up in a corner of the wall screen so Jensen and Jared could read it too. “Tell Misha his due diligence needs some work. He should've found that out before he sent you there. You should know it, too. How can you not know where you're wanted?”

“The law didn't even know we were there when we went to Katahdin. Maybe someone gave us up?”

“It's for weapons smuggling. There has to be evidence, otherwise it would just be for suspicion of.”

“Kim?”

Danneel shrugged. “Could be. It's a good way to get the law off your back, or to keep them friendly to you.”

“Well, we can't go back now,” Jensen said, “but we've got another problem. I'm going to tell you this in strict confidence, okay? Tell no one.”

“Ooh, Jensen. Now I'm all tingly.” Danneel shivered in what she no doubt thought was a sexy way.

“I'm serious. The missing person, her name's Alona Tal, her stepfather was the CEO of Green Worlds. Now the CEO of Sahar Tech. You know about the terraforming on Bernon. Alona says Green Worlds fucked Bernon up on purpose, to see how many corners they could cut in the terraforming. They knew everyone in the settlement would die, and they did it anyway. She says she has enough proof to bring her stepdad down, and I assume Sahar with him, since Green Worlds is defunct.”

“Shit.” Danneel sounded almost impressed.

“There's more. She wants us to break the contract and use this information as blackmail against her stepdad. She says if we take her back to him, he'll space her.”

“She wants to fake her death,” Jared interrupted. “To get away from him.”

“He sounds like a prize asshole,” Danneel said.

“Because Adrianne holds the contract,” Jensen continued doggedly, “it's her decision, not ours, and she wants to take Alona back to Stepdad and fulfill the contract. She was really insistent about not breaking it.”

“Do you believe everything this woman is telling you? If she doesn't want to go home, that's a great incentive to lie. She was on that rock for a reason.”

“That's what Adrianne said,” Jared commented.

“Alona said it was to atone,” Jensen added. “She was a head scientist for Green Worlds and they used her work and her team to destroy Bernon, so she feels responsible for all those deaths.”

“Okay,” Danneel said, sounding like she was gearing up for a lecture. “First of all, you never break a private contract. You know how I feel about Adrianne, but I have to agree with her there. I can't believe I'm saying that.” She rolled her eyes, presumably at herself. “If you take a private contract, you follow through. If you think it's a bad deal, you turn it down. You don't decide after you've found the target that you want to renegotiate.”

“From the way you talk about Adrianne,” Jared said, “I thought she might be mercenary enough to take Alona's deal, if the blackmail was worth more than the contract. Alona says it is. But so far, Adrianne's not biting.”

“So she has a code, at least as far as clients are concerned. Surprise. The people who go private are not people you want to fuck with, and Adrianne's a lot of things, but she's not that kind of stupid.”

“We don't have any options?”

“It's her contract. You have a handshake deal with Misha, if I remember right. You didn't even make your deal with her. If she doesn't want to break the contract, you can't make her. I still don't respect her, and she can't be trusted, but she'll hold that contract in her teeth like a pit dog until it pays out.”

“What if Alona fakes her death?”

Danneel raised an eyebrow. “You think that will work?”

“She does. If her stepdad thinks she's dead, he won't come after her. And it won't be Adrianne's fault, so he can't do anything to her either.”

“He doesn't know about us,” Jensen added. “Obviously.”

“I think that's a terrible idea,” Danneel said.

“We can't take her back to her stepdad if he's gonna kill her,” Jared said.

“You're still assuming everything she tells you is true.” Danneel sighed. “I think faking a death is asking for trouble, but you're the boys who let Adrianne on your ship and blithely flew into a sector not knowing you were _wanted there_ , so I'm going to assume it doesn't matter to you.”

“It matters if it's a stupid idea,” Jensen told her.

“We don't know what else to do,” Jared said. “We need a way to convince Adrianne not to tell Alona's stepdad we found her.”

“If more money won't do it, I don't know what to tell you,” Danneel said. “Are you sure she hasn't reported back to Stepdad?”

“Yes.”

“We're pretty sure,” Jensen clarified. “She just said blackmail wasn't a sure thing but the contract was.”

“She's not wrong,” Danneel said. “If Alona's stepdad doesn't know you found her, you can theoretically successfully fake her death. Theoretically. It's a lot of risk. Stepdad could come after you for letting his stepdaughter die.”

“He wants to kill her himself,” Jared said. “We can't let Adrianne take her back to him. I think whatever she has on him is big enough. We can get something over on the guy who deliberately wrecked a moon and killed a thousand people.”

“Wait.” Danneel pointed a finger at him. “Why are you doing all the talking? Jensen? What do you think?”

“My gut says to trust her,” he said. “But we've got a deal with Adrianne already, and we need the credits we've been promised if she delivers Alona to her stepdad. If the blackmail doesn't fly, for whatever reason, chances are pretty big I'll lose my ship.”

“I think we should help her,” Jared said.

“You have to remember you don't hold the contract with Alona's stepfather,” Danneel said. “Adrianne does. The one thing you know for sure, right now, is that she won't break it. Everything else you want is dumb and risky and could get you killed.”

“You make your credits chasing criminals across settled space with no backup and no guarantee,” Jensen pointed out. “That's not a sure thing either.”

“I have a bounty license and I know what I'm doing. You're smugglers, you shouldn't talk. Either convince Adrianne to let you do your dumb thing, or get her off your ship so you can abscond with Alona yourself.” Jared brightened. Jensen could feel the gears turning in his co-pilot's head. “Wait. No.” Danneel held up her hand. “Don't do that. You really do have to let Adrianne lead. I hate saying that, believe me when I tell you, but if she took a private contract with a very rich guy who could have very rich friends, she's not going to risk fucking up future contracts by breaking this one for no reason. I can promise you that.”

“Then we just have to get her to let Alona fake her death,” Jared said.

Danneel sighed. “You're hopeless. I'm not bailing you out of jail, and if a warrant for you comes up on the public feeds because of this, I can't promise I won't go after it. Just... check the next time you go running into sectors where you've committed a crime!” The wall went blank.

“That wasn't helpful,” Jensen told it.

“Yeah, it was,” Jared said. “The solution is to help Alona fake her death. It'll save Adrianne from having to break the contract. We just have to figure out how to do it.”

“We need to see what she has on her stepdad,” Jensen told him. “Where is she, anyway? How long does it take one woman to shower?” Even Adrianne didn't spend so much time in the head.

“Do we actually have a plan?” Jared asked, pretending to be incredulous. “Are you actually agreeing with me about something?”

“Shut up. I guess I am. I said I'd do one dumb thing” - getting Alona in the first place - “why not another? We just have to keep Adrianne from telling Stepdad we got his daughter. Shit. We have to figure out what to do about Misha.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was an idiot for agreeing to any of this. There were so many places something could go wrong – they had to decide what to do with Misha, whether to bring him in on the plan now or tell him about it after the fact, and they had to work under Adrianne's nose – but talking to Danneel made him realize they couldn't take Alona back to her stepfather. He believed the guy was capable of directing Green Worlds to deliberately destroy a moon knowing it would take a settlement full of people with it, and anyone who would do that was not a person you could trust with someone else's life. Even his stepdaughter's.

Best case scenario, he and Jared got enough credits to pay Chris off. Worst case, they ended up dead.

“We're going to die,” he said.

“No we're not,” Jared said cheerfully. “We have the fastest ship in settled space. We can outrun anything that comes after us.”

“Including corporate – oh, hey.”

Alona appeared in the doorway to the corridor leading to the head. She was still dressed in the black shift but now her hair was wet and tightly braided.

“We have a plan,” Jared told her. He patted the couch. “Come sit.”

“Tell me,” she said, not moving.

“We'll help you fake your death. We don't think your stepdad knows we found you yet. Adrianne won't break her contract with him, so you being dead is the only way to get around her and keep you out of your stepdad's hands. I don't think it will be hard to convince Misha and his crew to go in on the blackmail with us – they'll want something for all their work finding you, and they won't get anything if you're dead. And they're probably not opposed to a little blackmail among friends, especially if your evidence against Green Worlds is that good.”

“This is so far from a sure thing it's not funny,” Jensen said, “but it's the best of the bad ideas. You need a very convincing death. We have to keep Adrianne from telling your stepfather she found you. Your blackmail has to be really good. Misha has to agree to a deal with us for it. We have to stay off everyone's radar. We were already surprised with a warrant once today, we can't have that happen again.”

“We'll do better diligence on where we might be wanted.”

“Thank you,” Alona said. “It's worth it, I promise.”

“It better be,” Jensen told her. “We're taking your word for it that whatever you have on your stepdad is worth as much as his reward, and that he'll actually pay the blackmail. We need to see it to judge for ourselves, and sooner rather than later.”

“And we have to keep Adrianne from contacting your stepdad,” Jared added. “How fast can you fake your death?”

“I need some things,” Alona said. “I'll make a list.” She cocked her head. “Who's really in charge here? It's your ship” - she pointed to Jensen - “but Adrianne signed the contract to find me. Who's making the rules?”

“I am,” Jensen said. Alona didn't look convinced. “If Jared and I were working for Adrianne we wouldn't be having this conversation with you. We'd be on our way to meet your stepdad and get our reward.”

“We don't work for anyone,” Jared said.

“Well,” Alona said thoughtfully, “now you're working for me. If you need a contract I can write one up. I just want to be safe. Now I need to eat something. Where's the kitchen?”

Later Jensen sent Danneel a message to tell her they were going to do the stupid thing and if she had any suggestions as to how to get rid of Adrianne, he was all ears. Her response was to call him a lot of things, none of them polite. He decided discretion was the better part of valor and he was going to stay away from her until this whole episode was over. Besides, he needed to keep an eye on Adrianne to make sure she didn't contact Alona's stepdad.

Alona wrote up a list of things she needed in order to convincingly play dead, and Jensen realized they'd have to stop somewhere after all. He got in touch with Bob and asked if the guy knew of any discreet suppliers who could sell them this, that, and the other thing, no questions asked, no records kept. Bob gave them a name and Jensen plotted a course to an inoffensive planet in the next sector over. Jared tried to convince Adrianne that Alona's idea was better than hers, and Alona planted herself in the lounge and spent days on end collecting her information and pestering Jensen and Jared about the security of the line. She didn't want to leave any kind of trail or set off any alarms. No one could know she was still alive.

Jared talked to Genevieve, just to let her know he was fine. Jensen told her they were idiots who were probably going to get killed, but it was possible they were also geniuses who were going to be rich. Chris contacted the _Tombaugh_ twice. Jensen managed to placate him with a token payment and the promise of great future riches.

“That's what you said last time,” Chris pointed out. “Our friendship and my patience are only going to take you so far.”

“I have a plan,” Jensen said. “You'll get it all back, I promise.”

“I've already got ideas for your ship. I might even fly her myself.”

The thought of someone else sitting in the _Tombaugh_ 's cockpit – someone else touching her controls and entering coordinates into her navigation system and fiddling with her engines – made Jensen physically sick, and that, more than the idea of saving Alona from her homicidal stepfather or the promise of millions of credits, kept him focused on his and Jared's ridiculous plan.

And it was a ridiculous plan. How the hell were they going to engineer someone's death? It was going to take more than just a chemically-engineered demise. There was paperwork to fill out when someone died. Authorities to alert. Investigations to run, when the person was young and in apparently good health, as Alona was. This was beyond his and Jared's scope. They knew people who could easily fake a death certificate, but -

Wait. There was a solution. A simple one.

They'd tell her stepdad they found her frozen on Bernon. Everyone knew there was nothing there but a research station, and the scientists would just say she must have joined the cult, if anyone asked them. Word would get out that the cult wasn't just a rumor, but if that meant someone came to bust it up, well, that wasn't the worst thing.

And that way no one had fake an investigation or mock up a death certificate or forge any paperwork. There were no hospitals or medical examiners or morgues to involve. Just a frozen body.

Jensen was very proud of that idea, although when he announced to Alona and Jared that he'd figured it out, they just looked at him blankly. What did he think all those things Alona asked him to get were supposed to do? _Of course_ she was going to pretend to be frozen.

“Like an ice cube,” Jared said, grinning. “But bigger.”

What if Alona's stepdad wanted to collect her body to bury it himself? There had to be a way around that too. And her fakery had to be unassailable - if her stepfather was as determined to see her dead as she claimed, the man would no doubt turn over all of settled space if there was even the vague suggestion she was still alive. He had enough credits to throw at enough people until she was found a second time, if he thought she wasn't really dead.

And that led to the biggest flaw in their plan.

Adrianne.

Franziska, the settlement Bob had directed them to, was bigger and had been around longer than Port Wombat or La Spina or a lot of other places Jensen was used to. Their contact was a legitimate pharmacist who worked in a legitimate pharmacy but was not at all opposed to selling drugs for cash under the counter. Jensen dealt with him while Jared took Adrianne to resupply the galley, on the theory that she was the one with the biggest complaints about how well it had been stocked before. Alona stayed on the ship, paranoid about being discovered.

“We're on a backwater planet,” Jared told her, “as big as this town is. No one's going to know who you are.”

“Nevertheless,” she said. “I'm not taking any chances.”

Jensen trusted Jared to keep a close eye on Adrianne but the fact was that she had been very quiet about her contract in the past few days. Jensen wasn't stupid enough to think she'd changed her mind, and he hoped Jared wasn't either, but there was always the possibility that she was reconsidering. They really did need her to agree with their plan, for the simple reason that she was the one with stepdad's contact information.

“Is that the only reason?” Alona asked, after they'd left Franziska and she'd pronounced their supplies useful. Adrianne was making something to eat and Jensen figured he and Jared and Alona had about half an hour to plan around her. “You don't think I know how to find him?”

“You're supposed to be dead,” Jared pointed out.

“And I could be carrying identification on me. Contact information for my next-of-kin. Someone at the research station could identify me. Use your heads. Tell my stepfather you were working with Adrianne to find me – she hired your ship, I don't know – and when she discovered my frozen body on Bernon, you found my ID on me and used that to find him. You're contacting him and not Adrianne because she was too distraught by my death.”

Jensen snorted. “No one would believe that. Besides, if you joined a cult you wouldn't still have ID.”

“So Adrianne has a picture to verify my identity. Look. I've had five years to think about whether or not I wanted to leave Bernon, and if I did, how was I going to do it. What was I going to do about my stepfather and what he did? What was I going to do about my part in it? I've had a lot of time to plan. I had an idea my stepfather would eventually come looking for me, and I knew I probably couldn't vanish again, so I'd have to die. This is my one chance to fix what he broke.”

“Wait,” Jared said. “I thought we were going to blackmail him.”

“We are. And after we get the credits from him, we're going to release all the information anyway.”

Jensen tried to remember the original conversation, back when they first rescued Alona from the moon and she tried to make a deal for her life. At no time had she said she was going public with all the incriminating evidence she insisted she could get.

“That's got to--” he started to say.

“You'll get your credits, more than he offered to find me. You can pay your debts, upgrade your ship, I don't care. I'll expose him and his cronies for the murderers they are.”

“He'll come after us.”

“I can fake your deaths too,” she pointed out.

“You're crazy,” Jared said.

“You don't know him like I do.”

“It's the dumbest idea since... since ever,” Jensen said.

“What's the dumbest idea?” Adrianne asked, coming into the lounge holding a bowl with a fork sticking out of it. “Are you still working on your silly little blackmail plan?”

“How's the galley?” Jensen asked. “Stocked up to your liking?”

“Obviously. I should do all the shopping from now on. You snore,” she said to Alona. 

“I do not,” Alona said, offended. Adrianne just shrugged a shoulder. She perched on the edge of the couch and ate some of whatever she'd made. From where Jensen was sitting, it looked like rice and reconstituted eggplant.

“Unless I'm hearing one of you through the wall.” She pointed her fork at Jared and then Jensen.

“Blackmail's still a good plan,” Jared said. “You'll get all your credits back, and if Alona's stepdad thinks she was dead when you found her, it won't hit your reputation at all.”

“You keep saying that, and I have yet to see any actual blackmail material. As far as I'm concerned,” she said, turning to Alona, “you're blowing smoke up all our asses. I keep telling you you can't change my mind, and yet you keep trying. I'd be impressed if it wasn't so annoying.”

“I've almost got all of it,” Alona said. “It's not smoke, it's a real threat to my stepfather and Sahar's future. You'll see.”

“I doubt it, but okay.”

The wall comm pinged, surprising all of them, and Jensen opened the line to find Misha calling them through his handheld, if the shaky image and blurry background were anything to go by.

“A quick opportunity fell into our laps,” he said. “It will take us a week, tops. We'll see you on La Spina, same time, same place, but don't contact us beforehand.”

“Are you doing something boneheaded?” Jensen asked.

“Chad says no.”

“So you're doing something boneheaded.”

“Remind me why I offered you the chance to work with me,” Adrianne said.

“We're cute and we know people,” Misha said, grinning. “Just wanted to let you know. See you soon.” The wall went blank.

“I'm not surprised,” Jared said. “They've always got something going. Anyone else want a snack?” He headed for the galley.

“Don't worry about it,” Adrianne told Alona. “We can cut them free if they turn out to be too much trouble.”

“But you made a deal with them,” Alona said.

“I'll pay them what I owe them and be done.” Adrianne pointed her fork at Jensen. “He knows I don't care about anything but the contract.”

“What are the chances something will happen?”

“Depends on your definition of 'something'. If you mean 'will they fuck up and get the law on their asses', it's always a possibility. If you mean 'will they finish this job successfully and meet us on La Spina', that's always a possibility too. I'm the only one you need to worry about.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Jensen muttered.

“Still not breaking my contract.”

“Wasn't asking you to.”

“I'll get the rest of my documentation,” Alona said, “and show you everything. You'll change your mind.”

But Adrianne didn't. Even after Alona had acquired all the information she said she'd hidden, even after she showed it to Adrianne and Jensen and Jared, even after they determined how incriminating it was and how much they could pull from Alona's stepdad to keep it quiet. The lure of a well-paid legal contract was too strong for even a higher payout, as far as Adrianne was concerned.

“We'll go through with my plan anyway,” Alona proclaimed.

“I wouldn't,” Adrianne said.

“Why not?” Jared asked.

“It's an idiotic plan. They're all idiotic plans. It's a good thing you boys are cute, because your ideas are legitimate shit.”

And because they'd also legitimately been to jail as the result of one of those ideas, Jensen couldn't even argue with her.

They were over a week from La Spina but Alona told them they didn't have to wait any longer. They'd all seen her blackmail material. She had what she needed to fake her death. She didn't want to put it off.

She gave Jensen and Jared instructions on how to display her body and how to work the little life support machine she'd had them buy, but before she could get into any detail on how the drugs would work, Jared tapped the thing and said “We can just reprogram this.”

“You think?” Jensen asked, peering at it.

“Yeah. Easily.” Jared took it from Alona and turned it over in his hands. “It's just a machine. I'm good with machines. Who keeps the ship running?” He grinned.

“I do.”

“If you say so,” Alona said skeptically. “But just in case, you need to know how the drugs work.”

“Can we make a test run with the machine first?” Jared asked, and when Alona sighed and said sure, why not, he made an excited noise and went off to find some small tools so he could take it apart and figure out how to reprogram it.

She explained the drugs to Jensen in the meantime, in case they had to go that route. Jensen learned they would slow her heart and pull the color from her skin, and he shouldn't panic when she seemed to die. She gave him very careful instructions on how to revive her, so careful he felt like he should be taking notes. And then Jared said he thought he'd worked out how to reprogram the life support machine, and tested it on himself so they could see.

It very convincingly flatlined, and the numbers on the display were apparently consistent with what they'd get if they hooked it up to a corpse.

“Told you,” he said, beaming. “You just have to look dead,” he said to Alona, “and hold your breath.”

He got Adrianne to promise to stay out of the med bay, and then Alona arranged herself on the cot, practiced holding her breath, and let Jensen and Jared contact her stepfather on Jared's handheld.

The CEO of Sahar Tech, formerly the CEO of Green Worlds, was a distinguished-looking man in an expensive suit. He was fashionably clean-shaven and Jensen suspected he dyed his hair. Surprise momentarily flashed across Stepdad's face when he saw Jensen and Jared, and not the person he'd hired.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “How did you get onto this line?”

“We're working with Adrianne Palicki,” Jensen said, “the woman you hired to find your stepdaughter. Our deepest sympathies, sir. We couldn't bring her back alive.”

“We found her,” Jared added, “she was on Bernon, but she was... she'd frozen to death. We don't know what happened.” His sympathetic voice wasn't as good as Jensen's, but his face was very sincere.

“Is this a joke?” Alona's stepfather asked. “I spoke to Ms Palicki already. She found my stepdaughter – alive - and is bringing her to the delivery point. I've already transferred a percentage of the reward to her, as per our contract. I don't know who you are or how you're involved in this affair, but I don't appreciate the attempt to extort more credits from me.”

“It's not extortion, sir,” Jensen said, turning the handheld away from himself and Jared to show Alona's stepfather her body, the life support machine helpfully demonstrating how alive she wasn't. “You can see--”

“I don't know what kind of game you think you're playing here. My stepdaughter was alive and in Ms Palicki's custody not a week ago, so I don't see how she could have been dead when you found her.”

“It's not--” Jared started to say.

“This conversation is over.” The handheld screen went blank.

“Shit,” Jensen said. “She must have called Alona's stepdad from Franziska. You were watching her! You weren't supposed to let her out of your sight!”

“She had to pee!” Jared protested. “I wasn't gonna follow her into the head!”

“Maybe you should have!”

“She could have contacted him from here. We can't watch her all the time.” He disconnected the life support machine. “What do we do now? We don't have a plan C.”

Jensen should have listened to Danneel. He shouldn't have trusted Adrianne on his ship. He should have said no to Misha in the Glass Lamp, when Misha first said he had a job for them.

He should have done a lot of things.

“It would be a bad idea to space Adrianne, wouldn't it,” he said.

“Yes,” Alona said from the cot, her eyes still closed. “But it's tempting.”

“Can we still blackmail your stepdad?” Jared asked her. “Before we get to La Spina. That's probably where she's going to hand you over.”

“Probably. Let me think.”

“Sure, why not,” Jensen said to Jared, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice. They weren't blackmailers any more than they were finders of missing people. But they did know how to contact Alona's stepdad directly, and they did have all that evidence incriminating the guy and a bunch of other people in the failure of Bernon's terraforming and the destruction of the settlement and deaths of all the settlers. There was no reason they couldn't still let him know they had it, and they required a lot of credits to bury it again. He still didn't know who they were.

But he knew Alona was alive. If they let Adrianne turn her over, he'd kill her. And the whole reason Jensen and Jared were doing this at all was to keep Alona's stepfather from getting his hands on her, and to keep her from being dead.

“Danneel's going to kill us,” Jared said.

“She's going to get Adrianne first,” Jensen said.

“I said let me think,” Alona told them.

Jensen left her and Jared in the med bay and found Adrianne to yell at her for effectively signing Alona's death warrant. She just watched him serenely, unbothered.

“I told you,” she said, when he finally wound down. “Blackmail isn't certain. Contracts are. And I wasn't giving up that number of credits for some wild idea that you could get a wealthy CEO to pay you to keep certain information hidden, when he has so many other, cheaper ways to bury it. I'm meeting him on La Spina and handing Alona over, and that's final.”

“You really are a rancid bitch. Danneel was right.”

“I also told you I don't care what bounty hunters think of me. I don't do business with them. I do business with people like Alona's stepdad.”

“You made a deal with Misha,” Jensen pointed out. “You do business with anyone who will pay you.”

Adrianne shrugged. “And that makes me different from you, how?”

“Someday someone's going to space you and I will not be sorry.” He turned and stalked back to the med bay, where Alona was still lying on the cot, eyes closed, apparently thinking. Jared was pacing, probably also thinking.

“Did you go yell at Adrianne?” he asked Jensen.

“Yep. You were right – she's meeting Stepdad on La Spina. She doesn't believe Alona that he wants her dead, even after all that evidence that he wrecked Bernon deliberately, and she still won't consider blackmail.”

“I think she might be kind of right,” Jared said tentatively. “I mean, there really isn't a guarantee someone will pay blackmail, or that they won't get the law involved. The stuff Alona has is really bad, though. And there's a lot of it.”

“I know. I don't know what he'll do now that he knows she's alive, though. I could kill her with my bare hands.”

“Don't,” Alona said.

“Why not?”

“We might need her.” She opened her eyes, sat up, and started disconnecting herself from the life support machine. “What did he say to you? I couldn't hear him clearly.”

“Adrianne told him she found you alive, she's taking you to the meeting point, and he already transferred some of the reward money to her. Of course she'd want some of it before she turned you over. She's meeting him on La Spina, so we have another eight days to decide what to do.”

“Release everything,” Alona said firmly. “Take our chances.”

“Um,” Jared said. “What if he comes after us? Or you? We can't go back to jail.”

“I know.” She swung her feet over the side of the cot and stood up. “I'll talk to her.”

“About what?” Jensen asked.

“I'll think of something.”

The three of them went back to the lounge, where Adrianne was playing holo-chess against herself and eating Jared's favorite spicy soybean snacks. She looked up when they came in.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said to Alona. “The view's amazing but the food's only okay and there isn't enough hot water.”

“I know you contacted my stepfather,” Alona told her. “We have to talk.”

“I don't know what about, but if you want to, fine.” Adrianne stood and followed Alona out of the lounge and towards the cabins. She left the bag of soybeans behind. “Don't quit my game,” she called over her shoulder.

Jensen swiped it off the screen on the table and sat on the couch.  
  
“What the fuck,” he said.  
  
“I'm not even hungry any more,” Jared said, sitting next to him and staring sadly at the spicy soybeans. “We need some options.”  
  
Jensen brought up the notes program and displayed it on the wall. His hands hovered over the screen on the table. He couldn't think of a single next step.  
  
“Release Alona's evidence anyway,” Jared said, reaching over to type it himself. Jensen's brain kicked into gear and he pushed Jared's hands out of the way.  
  
“Blackmail,” he said, typing that underneath Jared's suggestion. “Get Alona away from her stepdad and Adrianne once we land on La Spina. Fake our deaths. Uh... throw ourselves on Chris's mercy and hope he can protect us. We won't be able to pay him back. We're never going to see our share of the reward money.”

“If Misha gets his, we'll get ours.”  
  
“I'd be surprised if Adrianne even hands over his share. Okay. We need a list of cons.” He typed “CONS” under the list of options and added “Stepdad comes after us. We go to jail. Chris takes my ship. We get blown out of the sky. Alona gets spaced.” He stared at the wall. What was the way out of this? If their goal was to keep Alona alive, they'd failed. If their goal was to make enough credits to pay Chris off and keep the _Tombaugh_ , they'd probably failed at that too. Jensen couldn't believe Adrianne would still give them their promised share of the reward.  
  
If their goal was to bring down the man who brought down Bernon, they could still do that. He just couldn't guess all the consequences that might follow.  
  
“We're screwed,” Jared said. He slouched hard enough to start sliding off the couch. “We should just release all that stuff into the feeds anyway. At least we'll be doing some good.”  
  
“And then what? We can't use it for blackmail if we set it all free, and without the blackmail we don't have the credits to get out from under Chris. He'll take my ship.”  
  
Jared pulled himself up and reached into the bag of soybeans.  
  
“You said you weren't hungry,” Jensen commented.  
  
“I wasn't. I am now.” He crunched. “What if we try blackmail first, and if that doesn't work, then we can release everything?”

“What if Stepdad comes after us for extortion? We'll do time.”

“But all that stuff about him and Green Worlds will be out in the universe, just waiting for someone to use it against him.”

“And you'd be okay with going back to jail?”

“No, but at least something good would come out of it.” Jared licked his finger, stuck it in the bag, pulled it out, and absently sucked spicy soybean dust off it. “I don't want to go to jail if we can help it. We can outrun him.”

Jensen doubted that – extortion wasn't necessarily a sector-specific crime, and if Alona's stepdad so chose, he could probably file a Galactic Union warrant for them, and there would be nowhere in the GU they could hide – but their options were looking limited. He tapped the screen on the table, contemplated the list on the wall.

“Isn't there some kind of protection for whistleblowers?” Jared asked.

“I'm pretty sure you have to have worked at the company you're blowing the whistle on,” Jensen said.

“Alona did.”

“But that doesn't protect us.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Jared even stopped eating.

“I think blackmail's our best option,” he said eventually.

“I was thinking we'd try throwing ourselves on Chris's mercy,” Jensen said. Jared stared at him. “I know, we'd be working for him until we paid him off, and chances are he'd make it take years, but he might let me keep my ship, and if we give him Alona's evidence, he's better at using it than we are. We avoid jail, we keep the _Tombaugh_ , someone still blackmails Stepdad. Maybe Alona does it.”

“Then her stepdad comes after her and spaces her.”

Jensen rubbed his face and groaned in frustration. There really was no good way out of this.

“What if we bring Misha and Chad in on the plan right now?” he suggested. “We don't have to wait until we get to La Spina.”

“You just want to avoid the mountains.”

“Is that so bad?”

Jared shrugged. “What do you think Alona and Adrianne are talking about?”

“Money. Honor. Adrianne's damn contract. Who knows?”

The comms crackled suddenly and an unfamiliar, formal voice said “Hailing the _Tombaugh_ , Colony Cluster registration NL12-967M4. This is the GUPF. You are being detained on suspicion of kidnapping. Prepare to be boarded.”

“Shit,” Jensen and Jared said together. _Alona's stepdad_ , Jensen thought. _How did he find us?_ And then _Kidnapping won't stick._

Not that it mattered, if they ended up in custody.

He sprinted towards the cockpit, slapped the button to open the internal comms, and yelled “Strap yourselves in, we're running.”

Jared skidded after him and fell into the co-pilot's seat. He buckled himself in. “Don't send us back to Yezhovo.”

“Then find me a backwater sector where we're not wanted.” Jensen punched coordinates into the navigation system. “Adjust for sublight.”

How many times could they jump? How much fuel did they have? What would happen if they popped out in Gadyukino Sector, where they were wanted for frying a couple of fighter jets?

The EMP cannon. Holy fuck, he forgot the cannon.

First they had to move.

“Punch it,” he told Jared, and they jumped.

“Where are we?” Jared asked breathlessly, when they popped out in the apparent middle of nowhere.

“Edge of the Cluster.”

“What?”

“We're in the Cluster,” he clarified. “The Guppies don't have jurisdiction. Go see if Alona and Adrianne are okay.”

Jared unbuckled himself and went off to check on their passengers. Jensen took a deep breath. Alona's stepdad must have tracked the signal from Jared's handheld. Jensen had heard such things were possible, although it was very rare tech and he didn't think it was particularly legal. Stepdad must have used it to alert the Guppies - the galactic police - but had the blues been in the area, or did they have sublight engines too? Jensen and Jared were more used to sector law enforcement. Local blues, not the big boys. Maybe the Guppies had better ships.

But even if the blues did follow them here, the Colony Cluster wasn't part of the GU. It was as its name implied – a cluster of former colonies – and a governmental and economic entity separate from the GU. It had its own laws and its own police force. There was no GU Council oversight, and GU warrants were harder to enforce here.

Harder to enforce, but still valid.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” Adrianne demanded over the comms.

Two patrol ships popped into view off to port. Jensen sucked in a breath. The Galactic Union had definitely equipped its police force with sublight engines. And not only that, they were equipped with good navigation systems and astonishingly accurate galactic tracking.

“We're jumping again,” he called. “Jared, get back here.” He punched coordinates. He had an idea.

“What – shit,” Jared said, sliding into the co-pilot's seat and squinting out the windshield. He flipped switches and spun dials and punched buttons. “Ready.”

They jumped a second time.

“What,” Jared said again, when they appeared over Katahdin. “Are we back in Cluny Sector? We're wanted here!”  
“I know. Sit tight.” Jensen opened a broadband line on the external comms. “Hey, Kim,” he called, “remember the _Tombaugh_? We're back. Come get us.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“The Guppies are following us, Jared. Galactic law. They're not in Kim's pocket. She comes for us, she gets them.”

“The sector blues want us too!”

“What the fuck are you doing, Jensen?” Adrianne yelled over the comms. “Do you want to scramble all our organs?”

“It'd be a bonus,” he muttered. He leaned forward and tried to see if the Guppies would follow them here too. “Jared,” he said, “how do you feel about suiting up and aiming the EMP cannon?”

“You're not serious,” Jared said.

“Like death.”

“For Kim or the blues?”

“Either/or. Both. I know, if we fire on the blues we can go to jail. We're already wanted here, so what does it matter? If they catch us, we go to jail. If we jump again we'll use up all our fuel. We need another choice.”

“But jail! What if they shoot back?”

“We hope they miss.” Jensen slumped in his chair. The Guppies hadn't followed them yet. That was encouraging. But a galactic warrant for kidnapping meant there was probably nowhere the _Tombaugh_ could hide. It wasn't like a warrant on them for gun-running in Cluny Sector – if they left the sector, the local blues couldn't follow, and a warrant issued for Cluny wasn't valid in, say, Itoh Sector or in La Spina or Port Wombat. Outside the Cluster, every space station and every planet and every moon with even the most half-assed settlement was subject to Galactic Union laws, and while those laws didn't apply to the Colony Cluster, it was a condition of the Cluster's independence that Guppies be allowed in to serve a galactic warrant.

The GU didn't throw the might of their police force against just anyone for just any reason. If Alona's stepdad could call the Guppies on the _Tombaugh_ and authorize them to chase her wherever she might fly, without taking the time to file an official warrant – if he could just point them in the right direction and tell them to go – he must have powerful friends in high places.

And it had to be his doing. The blues found Jensen and Jared too soon after they aroused Stepdad's suspicions for it to be anything else.

“Get your handheld,” Jensen told Jared. “They've gotta be tracking us through the signal.”

“That's not legal, not without a warrant.”

“I don't think they care.”

“I'm not going out there to fire that cannon.”

“You might not have a choice.”

Jared huffed, frustrated, but unbuckled himself and left the cockpit. Jensen tried to think. An idea started to form. A desperate, stupid idea. More desperate and stupid than using the _Tombaugh_ to bait Kim.

“Hey, Alona,” he said into the internal comms, “are you ready to send out any of that stuff you have on your stepdad?”

“Now?” she answered. “Why?”

“We're going to release some of it. Tell him to call off the Guppies or we'll release it all.”

“You _fucker_ ,” Adrianne swore.

“Galactic blues are following us, Adrianne. We jumped twice and they're still coming. I don't know why they're not here yet but there's no reason to assume they won't show. If we jump again, we use all our fuel. If they catch us, me and Jared go to jail for kidnapping and you go as an accessory, contract or no.”

“Weren't we just in the Cluster? Why'd you leave?”

“Galactic warrants are still valid there, you know that. What's our other choice?”

“I'll send it to Jared's handheld,” Alona said.

“I told you not to come back here,” a voice crackled over the external comms. Kim. “Make your peace with your various gods, because you're going out.”

“Jared!” Jensen yelled. “Hurry the fuck up!”

“I got it, I got it!” Jared yelled back. Jensen heard running, and then Jared burst into the cockpit half-zipped into an atmo suit. Alona must have interrupted him. He gave Jensen the handheld. “Kim's coming.”

“I know. Get ready.” Jared just stood there. “You want her to shoot us? Move!” Jared moved.

The line to Alona's stepdad was still open on the handheld. Jensen hissed angrily. That was their fault for not closing it themselves. He pinged Stepdad. Nothing. He pinged again.

“I know you can hear us,” he said into the handheld. “We know about Bernon. We know what you did. We've got evidence. Call off the Guppies or we'll release it – all of it – onto the feeds.”

“Guppies?” Stepdad repeated.

“The GUPF. The blues.”

“Extortion is a crime.”

“So is deliberately destroying a moon.” Jensen sent the two pieces of evidence Alona had put on the handheld. “That's just a tiny part of it. We've got a lot more. Trust me when I say we're ready to release it and to hell with jail.”

Jared had hopefully finished suiting up and was climbing the ladder to the _Tombaugh_ 's roof and strapping himself into the cannon placement. Kim was on her way. Theoretically the Guppies were too. Jensen tried to stay calm. This was by far the dumbest of all the dumb ideas but if they were going to jail – and he was pretty sure they were, somehow – they were damn well going to deserve it.

“Thanks for the gift, Jensen,” Kim said over the comms. “You're just in sight.” He looked up from the handheld and there she was, Kim's ship, the _Sauer_. She was armed and she was fast, but the _Tombaugh_ was as well, and if Jensen could hold on one more minute - 

_Here we go_ , he thought, as two GUPF patrol ships popped out of sublight off to port.

“Hailing the _Tombaugh_ ,” one of the officers called through the comms. “If you try to jump again you will be fired upon.”

“Say hi to my new friends,” Jensen said to Kim. “Galactic blues. Also, if you'll look on the roof of my ship, you'll see an EMP cannon. It's charged and I don't care who I fire it at.”

“You won't shoot the Guppies,” Kim snorted. “You can't afford the fine.”

“You tell yourself that. We can't go to Gadyukino Sector because they'll sling our butts in jail for frying a couple of fighter jets.”

“I know I'm impressed,” Adrianne said dryly from the cockpit entrance. She leaned over Jensen's chair. “Are we dead yet?”

“We should've pinged Chris,” Jared said over the internal comms. His voice sounded a little crackly, so he must have made it up to the cannon.

“He wouldn't take us if we've got Guppies on our tail,” Jensen told him. “That's too much heat even for him. Are you ready?”

“Who am I aiming at?”

“Whoever looks like they're going to shoot us.”

“This is your last warning,” one of the blues said. “Surrender and prepare to be boarded, or run and lose your engines.”

“The Guppies,” Jensen and Jared said together. Jared sounded resigned. Jensen tried to sound firm.

“Do you need a visual?” Jensen asked Alona's stepdad. “Do you need to see what I'm seeing? I have my EMP cannon trained on your pet blues.” He was disappointed the Guppies didn't seem interested in Kim, because that would solve at least one of their problems.

“You seem to think you have some leverage here,” Stepdad said, still calm. “Remember that extortion is a crime. Firing upon a galactic police cruiser is as well.”

“Adrianne Palicki here,” Adrianne said, grabbing the handheld. “These numbnuts don't work for me and I'm trying to get me and your stepdaughter out of it.”

“To be honest, Ms Palicki, I don't care.”

“You will when the Guppies fry her by mistake.”

There was a pause. “They follow the law,” Alona's stepdad said. “But do what you can.”

This was ridiculous. Jensen took the handheld back.

“We can't wait,” he said into it. “Call them off or we release the rest of our evidence, and you go to jail.”

“Time's up,” Kim said. “We're taking you out.”

“She's firing,” Jensen told Jared. “Hit her. Now.”

He thought he could hear swearing, but he saw a flash over the ship and heard a spitting crackle over the external comms. All the lights on the _Sauer_ went dark.

“We've got one more charge,” Jared said. “I don't--”

The _Tombaugh_ rocked as the Guppies fired a warning shot just a little too close to starboard. Another flash from overhead and the lights went out on one of the cruisers.

“I panicked!” Jared said.

“It's okay,” Jensen told him. It wasn't, but what was he going to say? “Get inside. We're jumping.” He turned to Adrianne. “Out of my cockpit.” She just looked at him.

“If I end up in jail,” she said, voice tight, “I am going to give them every fucking thing I have on you. I'll roll so fast I'll shed sparks.”

“Do I look like I give a shit? Get out of my cockpit.” He pointed.

“I'm going to release everything!” Alona called. “Tell him that! Lab reports, messages, recordings, everything – internal memos, I have _everything_ – tell him it's all going out!”

“Your stepdaughter's taking you down,” Jensen said into the handheld.

The remaining police cruiser fired another warning shot to port. The ship rocked.

“Prepare to be boarded and towed,” an officer said.

“Jared!” Jensen called. “Where are you?”

“I'm in, I'm in!” Jared sounded winded. “Go! Go!”

“Strap yoursel--”

The ship rocked again, but not from another warning shot. This time they'd actually been hit. Jensen heard the boom and the whine as the main engine shut down and they were suddenly dead in the sky.

Shit.

“You _asshole_ ,” Alona hissed over the comms, her voice hard. Jensen was impressed at the amount of anger pressed into those two words. “It's gone, all of it. It's out. It's free. You're _fucked_.”

“Your stepdaughter just sent you to jail,” Jensen told Stepdad.

“I was exonerated,” was the reply, “but you're going to prison for resisting arrest, kidnapping, and extortion,” and then the cruiser was approaching, another two popped out of sublight, and they were caught.

Things moved remarkably fast when the galactic police came for your ass. In short order, Jensen, Jared, Alona, and Adrianne were found, cuffed, had charges read to them, and were brought to a transport ship. Alona tried to tell the Guppies who she was and what they were in for and that she hadn't done anything wrong, but the other three kept their mouths shut. It was a lesson you learned early and well, if you lived your life and generally made your credits on the wrong side of the law.

At some point Alona was transferred away, no doubt back to her stepfather. The other three were taken to the GUPF holding center in Cluny Sector, where they were entered into the system and given a court hearing, at which they all pled not guilty. Adrianne was separated from the group, probably sent to a women's facility, and Jensen and Jared ended up on a space station prison, awaiting trial.

“This is like Ayre all over again,” Jared muttered. He was still a little pissed at Jensen, understandably, but Jensen was pissed at himself. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. But he knew Chris wouldn't have protected them, not if there was a whisper of a galactic warrant attached to their names. It wasn't just rumor that the Guppies couldn't be bought. Even Chris tried to steer clear.

The charges of extortion, Jensen knew, wouldn't stick, not if Alona really had released all their blackmail material onto the feeds. Attempted extortion, though, that might hold. Jensen was no doubt on record announcing that he'd release incriminating evidence unless Alona's stepdad called off the blues. There were no credits involved, and no actual threats against anyone's life, but there were different classes of extortion and not every court would look at the charges the same way.

And on top of that, he'd lost his ship. The one thing he'd been trying to avoid. If he'd thought ahead he could've just given her to Chris. At least he'd know where she was, and that there was a chance, however slim, that he might one day get her back.

He was an idiot and they were screwed. And Alona's stepdad was going to come for her anyway, and she'd still end up spaced.

Everyone lost.

He'd used his one free call to contact Danneel, because for all her bitching he knew she'd bust her ass to help him and Jared, and she still had contacts in law enforcement, in the Cluster if not the GU. Jared pinged Misha, who was indirectly responsible for them being in this mess but who knew a lot of people in a lot of places, and if Danneel couldn't get them out of this legally, Misha could do it from the other side of the line.

The court-ordered attorney who'd somehow gotten both of their cases didn't seem to think they had much chance at getting the charges dropped, but he could probably get their sentences reduced.

“Your ship's still in impound,” he told them. “A lot of that information on Green Worlds is out there. I can't tell if all of it was released, but there's certainly a lot of very incriminating evidence on the feeds. That could help you. If you don't have the information with which to blackmail, I should be able to get the charge reduced.”

“I never made a deal,” Jensen added. “We didn't get that far.”

“I can't do anything about you firing on the GU cruiser, though.”

“I panicked,” Jared admitted. “It was dumb. We were desperate.”

“That doesn't make a difference. The court won't consider fear for your life as a reasonable defense if you're afraid of the cops because you've broken the law.”

“What about other warrants?” Jensen asked, thinking about Katahdin and the thing with the guns.

“The prosecution hasn't mentioned any. So far they're sticking to the original charges. But it could come up in court, so I need to know where else you might be wanted. I can find out myself but it helps if you're honest with me.”

So they told him about the outstanding warrants they knew of, plus the business in Gadyukino Sector, plus the business on Ayre, even though their warrant and their record had been cleared there.

Jensen had managed to send Danneel a message asking her to look into their attorney, and her response had been that he seemed like an honest guy, if overworked and underpaid like most public defenders. He'd do what he could, she said, although that probably wasn't much. Jensen and Jared knew not to trust law enforcement, but they decided to at least trust the attorney.

Jared wrote to Alona, or tried to, but there was no response. And in the meantime he and Jensen had little to do besides keep their eyes open and their mouths shut and their heads down, and try to figure out how to get out of there.

And then one day, a couple of weeks into their incarceration, they had a visitor. She looked much different than she had the first time they met her, as she was now wearing an expensive-looking, well-tailored suit, not a plain black shift, her hair was blonde, and she told them in the visiting room that she had a plan.

“Did you talk to Adrianne?” Jared asked.

“They dropped the charges and she was released,” Alona told him and Jensen.

“Does your stepdad know you're here?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think? I don't have any leverage against him any more but I still have money, and I still know how to hide. And everyone's looking at him, so he's being really careful. Your friends pinged me.”

“Which friends?” Jensen asked.

“Misha and Chad. I don't trust them but they got me in here. Now you have to trust me.”

“We do.”

Jared nodded.

“Good. You're in here because of me, and it's my responsibility to get you out. Sit tight. Be honest with your lawyer. He's doing the best he can.”

“Did you send him?” Jared asked. “I thought he was a public attorney.”

“He is. The GU threw up a wall I can't get around. That's my stepfather's doing. But I've been in contact with your attorney and I'm trying to help him. But don't tell him you saw me.”

“You said you had a plan,” Jensen reminded her.

“You're going to eat something that disagrees with you.”

“You know there are medical facilities here, right?”

“Of course. I also know what they can and can't treat. You're going out on a medical transport and that's all I can tell you.”

“Was that Chad's idea?” Jared asked. Alona shrugged noncommittally.

“Misha,” Jensen suggested. Another shrug. “Can you get my ship out?”

“I don't know,” Alona admitted. “I'm working on it. You just have to trust me.”

Jensen and Jared trusted her through their trials, their sentencing hearings, and the prospect of doing time. They trusted her for two months and then they both, quite coincidentally, had a violent reaction to something at lunch, and when they were taken to the infirmary, the doc on duty pronounced their illness beyond her ability to treat, and called for a transport ship.

Whatever they'd been infected with knocked Jensen right out, and he woke up not in a hospital under armed guard, as he would have expected, but in an unfamiliar med bay on an unfamiliar ship. Alona was there, dressed as a medtech, and-- 

“Danneel?” he croaked. She'd dyed the pink out of her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on your dumb ass,” she said, grinning.

“Did you call her?” he asked Alona.

“Adrianne did, if you can believe that,” Danneel said. “Misha got in touch with her. She said you owe her a frankly unbelievable number of credits and she needed you out of jail so she could take it out of your ass.” She perched on the edge of the bed. “I couldn't help you from my side of the law. After the trial verdict is entered into the record, you're in a whole different part of the system. My only recourse would be appeals, and why would a judge listen to me? I didn't think busting you out was a great idea but it was better than any of mine.” She smiled ruefully. “You can call me a dumbshit if you want.”

“You could lose your license.”

“Some people think bounty hunters have one foot on the other side of the law anyway. But no one here would turn me in. Not even Adrianne.”

“You trust her now?”

“Oh, hell no.”

“Where is here?” He tried to sit up. “Where's Jared?”

“Eating, where do you think?” Danneel grinned again.

“We're on Misha's ship,” Alona said. “The _Asmodeus_.”

“Where's the _Tombaugh_?” Jensen asked.

“She's safe.”

“Where is she?”

Alona hesitated. “In a hangar on La Spina.”

“She's _what_? Anyone could find her!” He pushed himself off the bed, dislodging Danneel in the process. “Why didn't you just leave her out in a field?”

“Sit!” Alona pointed firmly at the bed. Jensen sat. Danneel stifled a giggle. “She's well hidden and she's safe. Trust me.”

“What about Chris? Can you hide her from him?”

“I took care of that.”

“How?”

“I paid off your debt.” At his no doubt blank look, because how and why would she do such a thing, she added “I thought I owed you at least that. I told you I still have money.”

“You know we can't pay you back.” Just what he and Jared needed – another debt. “We're jailbreaks now. Fuck. We gotta hide.”

“You are hiding,” Alona pointed out.

“Where? Don't tell me we're over La Spina too.”

“You'll laugh,” Danneel said.

“We're not in fucking Cluny Sector, are we?”

“We're not that dumb.”

“Itoh Sector,” Alona said. “Danneel told us you come here when you panic.”

Danneel couldn't stop grinning. “Bitch,” Jensen said, but he meant it affectionately.

“Hey, you're up!” Jared said, walking into the med bay with a bowl of something. He fished some noodles out of the bowl with his fingers and sucked them down.

“Genevieve would be so embarrassed,” Danneel said. “Were you raised in a cargo hold?”

“How're you feeling?” he asked Jensen. “Like you got run over, right?”

“Kind of,” Jensen said. To be honest, he didn't feel all that bad. His throat was dry and his muscles were starting to twitch, but a good run around the _Asmodeus_ would solve the second problem and a cold drink would solve the first. “So what happened?”

“Misha has a new pilot, a girl named Rachel. She knows someone who knows someone who could sneak something into our lunch. Alona mixed up something really awful. We got violently ill – you should remember that – the prison infirmary didn't have the right drugs to treat us and didn't want to wait for them to arrive, we got loaded into a transport, and guess who was driving.” 

“Chad,” Jensen guessed. “What happened to the guards? There had to be guards on the transport with us.”

“You'd be surprised what a few well-placed credits can do,” Alona said, and Danneel added “Or a transfer.”

“Huh.” Jensen's stomach growled.

“One of them had to be subdued,” Jared went on. “I heard Adrianne really enjoyed that. She's not here, by the way. Misha dropped her at some station. She, uh, she got paid the rest of her contract.”

“How?” Jared and Danneel both pointed at Alona. “No shit.”

“She wanted to take me back to my stepfather,” Alona said, “knowing he wanted me dead. But it was my fault she got thrown in jail, and if he hadn't pushed me into releasing everything onto the feeds, she'd have gotten something for the blackmail. I felt like I owed her. Besides,” she finished brightly, “now she'll leave you alone.”

“I need to eat something,” Jensen said, “drink something, and then figure out what to do. We're wanted everywhere now, aren't we.”

“Not in the Cluster,” Jared said. He tipped the bowl up and finished whatever was left in it. “I could eat more.”

So they all trooped out of the med bay and into the galley, where the evidence of Jared's attempt to make noodles was scattered everywhere. Misha appeared, told Jensen about his and Chad's part in the escapade in more detail, and reminded Jared that he had to clean up after himself.

“You sound like Genevieve,” Jared said.

“So what do we do now?” Jensen asked him. The parts of settled space where they could never show their faces again covered most of the map, and he didn't want to spend the rest of his life confined to the Colony Cluster. He didn't think Jared did either.

“I know a guy who can wipe your records,” Misha said, “make you legally dead.”

“GU blues don't chase dead men,” Alona added helpfully.

“What about your stepdad?” Jensen asked. “Is he still a threat?”

“No.” She smiled a small, wicked smile. “Everything I had on him is splashed across settled space. Everyone knows. Not everyone believes, but everyone knows. Cluny Sector administration is building two cases against him – one on behalf of the old settlement on Bernon, and one to recoup what they paid for the terraforming. I don't doubt there are other suits brewing aside from those. I don't think he'll take Sahar down with him, but he's not the only one who will have to stand trial. It's a mess. I'm so pleased.”

“I thought maybe we could do something like that,” Jared said. “Like... help people. Take down guys like Alona's stepdad.”

“I think you should go into business with me,” Misha said. “I always said the _Tombaugh_ was the fastest ship in settled space.”

“Yeah, and we still got caught,” Jensen said. “Twice. You don't care we're wanted everywhere except the Cluster?”

“Jim can fix it so you look dead to the GU. New names, new ID, everything. It's not cheap, but it's possible.”

“We're not going to work for you. We're not thieves.”

“Jensen!” Misha slapped a hand over his heart, exaggeratedly offended. “You wound me! We merely redistribute goods and credits more equitably across settled space. Besides, you wouldn't be working _for_ us, but _with_ us.”

“We have to think about it.”

“Think about something else,” Alona said. “Think about working with me.”

“Doing...?”

“What I said,” Jared told him. “Helping people. Taking down guys like Alona's stepdad. Like, rich guys who get away with shit that would land anyone else in jail.”

“Where law enforcement fails,” Alona said, “we step in. Honestly, my first idea was to convince you to help me get some girls out of Purmort. Jared told me the research station helped you because you brought them supplies, so if you made another delivery, maybe you could convince them to help you again.”

“We can't--” Jensen started to say. Did no one remember that it was their attempt to grab Alona from where she'd been hiding with the cult that started all the trouble? If they hadn't agreed to go to Bernon to get her, none of this would have happened.

“Jim can make you look dead to the GU,” Misha repeated.

“It can work,” Alona said.

“I thought it over,” Jared said, “and I'm in.”

“Well, _I_ haven't,” Jensen said, “and I'm not. I'm not faking my death.” He knew how well that had worked when Alona tried it, and he and Jared didn't have the luxury of pretending to be found dead after five years missing. “When can I get my ship back?”

It was almost a week before Misha would consent to going back to La Spina for the _Tombaugh_. In that time, Jensen and Jared had a lot of conversations about their future and made as comprehensive a list as possible of the places they were wanted and the various warrants on and charges against them. It was a longer list than Jensen was expecting.

“You don't want to go charging into a sector where you're _wanted_ again,” Danneel said pointedly, as if that mattered when there was a galactic warrant with their names on it. “I'll tell Genevieve you're alive and well and hiding out somewhere, as long as she promises to keep it a secret. When you figure out what you're doing, if it's safe, go see her. She'll worry.” She kissed Jensen and Jared on both cheeks and climbed into the _Asmodeus_ 's landing pod, so Misha could drop her off at a space station and she could get a shuttle back to wherever she'd parked the _Canned Ham_.

It was clear they couldn't go back to smuggling. Too many people were looking for them in too many places, even without the lure of whatever reward the galactic warrant offered. Anyone could pick them up – just because bounty hunters needed a license didn't mean the average citizen couldn't also bring someone in. They had to lie low.

But Jensen had his ship back, and he and Jared had gotten out from under Chris, and their skins were still intact, and it was more than he'd expected when the blues chased them to Cluny Sector and caught them. He'd chosen to haul freight, but he'd fallen into smuggling without thinking about it too hard. Maybe it was time to choose again.

Alona's idea wasn't a bad one. After all, hadn't he and Jared agreed to get her in the first place partly because of what her stepfather had done to Bernon? They'd done it for the credits, of course, and to keep Jensen from losing the _Tombaugh_ to Chris, but they'd let themselves be convinced at least a little by the opportunity to right a wrong, to make a seemingly untouchable man actually pay for his crimes.

It was nowhere close to what Jensen had thought he'd do with his life, after he finished up his time with the mining conglomerate. Righting wrongs and helping the helpless carried no more guarantees than smuggling had, even if he and Jared paid Misha's friend to wipe their identities out of every database and off every record in every system, but at least Alona's money might help keep them afloat, and they were used to working outside the law. They'd figure out a way to cloak the _Tombaugh_ from the Guppies' insane trackers, because if they could hide her from the galactic police, she really would be the fastest ship in settled space, and no one would be able to catch them.

Two weeks after his and Jared's jailbreak, and a day or two out from La Spina, Jensen found Alona in the cockpit of the _Asmodeus_ , having what sounded like a thoroughly trivial conversation with Rachel, the ship's pilot, and told her he'd thought about it, and he and Jared had discussed it, and as soon as they got the _Tombaugh_ back, they'd take her up on her offer. Right wrongs, protect the unprotected, touch the untouchable.

He'd been a freighter pilot, he'd been a smuggler, he'd been a jailbird. But he'd never been a professional good guy. He was looking forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks!  
> dear_tiger as always, for indulging me with Russian place names, giving me good beta notes, and commenting (accurately) that one of J&J's ideas is “the dumbest plan in the history of ever”  
> cassiopeia7, my poor beleaguered artist, for picking my summary for the second year in a row, and making fabulous art. [Check it out!](https://cassiopeia7.dreamwidth.org/572466.html)  
> wrenlet for trying to help me figure out early on what the plot could be, and sharing my squee over the appearance of Captain Ford  
> lasrina for also trying to help with the plot, even tho her idea was “tentacles!”  
> my writing group for early critique and suggestions, especially Allyson for asking “Is this going to be adventurey or canned-ham-y?” which made me laugh so hard I almost fell off my chair  
> wendy for her continued and expert modding, and for letting us extend our deadline  
> and Han Solo, OG space smuggler and, in the person of Harrison Ford, my longest-running crush
> 
> there is of course a rambly [author's note](https://tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com/1955823.html), because I can't help myself.


End file.
